My wife is the primary beneficiary of our '03 TLS as she drives it to work every day. She recently started complaining about a lot of noise coming from the car during her daily mostly expressway commute. I test drove the car and pinpointed the tires as the culprit... just for grins I took the car to my local dealer to seek their opinion.

After chatting about possible causes he agreed and happily told me it all had to do with tire wear and that basically is the way it is. (The are the stock Michelin Pilots for what it's worth.) While it's certainly not the dealer's fault that the tires are at fault the more I thought about it I've decided there must be more to this.

Has anyone out there had a similar experience with their TLS? Seems like a sport luxury sedan shouldn't be burdened with tires that whine like Al Gore after he lost the election. They are getting a bit louder as time goes on... Al, thankfully, isn't.

 

How many miles do you have on the stock tires? I also have an '03 TL-s with 43k+ miles, but replaced the stock tires at around 42k miles. I didn't realize the stock tires were noisy until I had them replaced.....new ones are a lot quieter (no, I did not go with the stock Michelins again.) Basically, the stock tires suck, horrible wet and snow traction, and I wouldn't say they have good dry traction either.....Anyway, my tires did seem to get louder as they wore down but I assume you don't have the mileage that I have......( I drive A LOT!).

 

Yeah, I have 16K miles on an 02TLS and so far my tires have worn evenly and still remain quiet. I have rotated them twice. Once at 7.5K miles and again at 15K miles. They also track STRAIGHT down the road, unlike any other tire I've owned. Everyone seems to hate the stock tires, but I recently had a 03 Maxima SE for a vacation rental and the stock Bridgestone Potenza tires sqealed like a stuck pig everything I took a corner at any decent speed. They also slipped like mad on dry pavement without hard acceleration. I thought that the Bridgestones were supposed to be much superior tires.... but my experience didn't confirm that.

 

Yes, the stock tires are, the lack for a better word, "stock tires." I still found them to be good for all around use. The Michellins are some of the best rated passenger tires around. The Pilot series are a little higher performance. Of course other aftermarket tires that are design for performance are better deserving on a fine vehicle such as a TLS. Nonetheless, I got 52K off of my stock tires and since upgraded to Continentals SportConti IIs. Now my baby really corners, but don't expect to get 52K out of her new shoes.