The kind of roads also make a difference obviously. If you drive in
mountain roads it is normal to make less kilometers than someone who
mostly drive in straight motorways.

But 30000 miles (almost 50000 km) seems quite good to me (if the
tyre was reasonably grippy).

He is lazy. You can rotate directional tyres if you dismount and remount
them on the wheels after rotating them 180 degrees (unless, of course
they are also assymetric, but those are very rare).

I prefer to buy tyres from a brand that I have heard about and I had never
heard about Cooper tires.

A 2 minute search on the web found that Cooper tires is a big manufacturer
(40 million tires/year), but also that some of those tires were very
slopply made:

http://www.tiredefects.com/defective-cooper-tires-unsafe-production.cfm

Anyway I would chose a tyre from Michelin, Pirelli, Goodyear, Bridgestone,
Continental*, and maybe some of their sub-brands (Uniroyal** (Continental),
Dunlop (Goodyear))

* Continental is slightly less known than the others, but my current
car happened to come with Continental tyres (Sport Contact) and I found
those to be very good. Later a comparative test in "Auto Motor und Sport"
gave very good marks to the Continental Sport Contact 2 (quite near to
the Pirelli P6000 (?I think) which was the best in that test).

** this Uniroyal brand is not to be confused with an American brand
"Uniroyal Goodrich Tire" which now belongs to Michelin. The European
Uniroyal had the slogan "The Rain Tyre". I have used them in the past, but
if they used to be superior to other brands in the rain, the recent tests
I have read don't show such an advantage and they did wear out too fast.

http://www.conti-online.com/generator/www/de/en/uniroyal/automobile/themes/01_ho
me/index_en.html

And of course, in each brand there are high-performance tyres and others.

Personally I think tyres are a bad place to save money. If you have a minor
accident because the tyre you choose has slightly less grip than another
you could have chosen, all the savings in tyres and fuel disappear.

BTW, Goodrich is a sub brand of Michelin. In a recent test I read some
model of a Goodrich tyre was significantly worse (in the wet) than the
others including Michelin (I don't remember the models or where I read
that test). Apparently because they are not yet using silica:

http://www.tyres-online.co.uk/technology/silica.asp

BTW, although some of these brands have unidirectional tyres, if you
really want a non-directional tyre you can find one without going
for obscure brands.

Well, I think that answers it. Pretty much the only tires that come in
"directional" designs are the high-performance short-lived variety with
a soft/sticky tread compound. Nature of the beast. I have to wonder why
the heck you'd have tires like that on a Protege, anyway. Unless you
autocross it or something.

Its fairly rare to rotate tires side-to-side anymore. Early radials
would sometimes develop a "set" and if switched to rolling the other way
would develop a very strong pull toward one side or the other. That is
probably not a big problem with tires in recent years, but it is STILL
standard practice to rotate only front/back.

Don't know a thing about them, but there are plenty of other BFG tires
that should last a lot longer than 30k miles.

For a racing car that only turns left, or for a dump truck operating
at a mine?
--scott

ok, but MY choice of tires for MY car makes about as much sense as
asking what color you'd paint your car.

Summer?  Winter?  Race?  What kind of car?

My pickup truck sees different types of usage than my Trans Am...

That said, you asked, I'll answer.  I believe in summer tires made by BF
Goodrich.  I buy cheap winter tires because I should know better, but
can't part with the money.

I drive my cars hard, so my Trans Am has about 35,000 miles and has gone
through TWO sets of tires, not including my dedicated drag race tires.

I once had a tire make it 4 laps on my dirt track car.  That's 1.6 miles.

Seriously, I've given up on cheap tires.  BF's on all my cars from now
on.  I love grip, mileage be damned.

Some are just cheap crap.  In '85 when I bought a nissen sentra new, the
bridgestones that were installed as rim protectors didn't last 10K miles.
The dunlops that followed lasted 60K miles.