were on good year tyres
they have performed braking changing direction,very well while other people are driving on our side of road.
we tried various tyres on the 2 Mondeo's we owned, one tyre make always looked flat, another make didn't last 10000 miles motorway driving, others made the car handle strangely, the good year make has always been ok with our mondeos and seem to last the 7 years without crazing.
I learnt quickly cheap tyres cause a lot of wheel changes, most of them bleb'd although correct pressure, 8 nuts each wheel. to undo and tighten.
all depends on budget.

As you probably know, Roger, it's a legal requirement for us to change our tyres twice a year - summer and winter. Well not exactly a requirement but the legal jargon is so written that rather than argue before a court that you were not holding up traffic due to having inappropriate tyres for the season or you slid a metre or so over a zebra crossing even though nobody was on it, so that in the end everybody does change. Anyway, I digress. :-)

Due to the above, our largest motoring organisation (ADAC) conducts and publishes tyre tests twice a year - summer tyres and winter tyres - and in both cases Continental either come in at first place or at least somewhere in the top three. Now it would be my guess that due to the British climate almost all of your cars are fitted with a compromise tyre - the so called all season tyre due to the fact that the winters are not so severe as to justify making it a requirement that you all sport winter tyres.

I can't imagine for one moment that your Continental tyres are of the same compound as my Touran's summer tyres which I now have on because you'd get even less mileage out of them than you're complaining of now - and in winter they'd be possitively dangerous. Likewise I doubt that you're sporting winter tyres because the compound is so soft that you'd chew them up in next to no time.

So, I'm also guessing that your tyres will have M+S stamped on them which is also sometimes represented as M&S or M/S meaning that the tyre meets the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) criteria for performance in mud and snow conditions - which is IIRC having something like at least a 37% void (tread groove) ratio. A tyre with an M+S rating would be considered and marketed as an "all-season" tyre. Interestingly enough, a tiye does not have to be tested in mud or snow conditions to get this rating, it just has to have a high enough percentage of tread grooves to qualify, so the presence of this label does not ensure performance in those conditions. Tyres actually designed, tested and certified for severe winter use will have some variation of the M and S plus a pictograph of a mountain with a snow flake in it. Tyres with that symbol actually do work in real winter.

Oops, I'm digressing again. :-) You can't expect to achieve high mileages sporting compromise tyres which are either too soft for one season or too hard for another and in my opinion, with other things considered (as others have mentioned) you're getting a fair return on those Continentals.

Edit - just out of interest I've just looked at the ADAC test report for the tyres my Touran is currently sporting; Continental ContiPremium Contact 5. They get awarded top place for performance on both dry and wet roads but a negative against them for wear.

This year will be the first time I have ever used "winter" tyres, I have Conti's on the car at the moment and the winter tyres are also Conti's but with a lot more grooves and tread pattern, I was advised to start using them when temperatures started to fall below 7° continuously?