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re: "...Seriously, when I bought my first set of Hakkapeliitta's about 30 years ago, Nokian didn't have much of a US distribution system in place. I would get them from University Tire Wholesale somewhere in the upper reaches of Vermont...."
Actually, I beat you slightly :-), starting with Nokia tires' NR-09 (studded, of course) around 1977 (36 years ago), shipped from the sole U.S. distributor at the time, in Wisconsin as I recall.
re: "...the sales receipts show only Sam's stock number and the tire sizes. BUT, I do still have a Sam's Club shop order....as "P195/70R14 XRAD DT"."
That, Sam's Club, and the "XRAD DT" explains the name and solves the misunderstanding. Michelin stopped making the original X around 1980, which is what I (and some other old geezer posters) thought of. The original X was THE rally car tire of the 1970's, because it wouldn't change its circumference when it went from cold to hot, and therefore retained speedo/odo-accuracy when we went on sports car club rallies (used along with the Curta "pepper grinder" hand-cranked, or for the richer of us, the Halda SpeedPilot, odometer cable-driven). Do you remember those, or you're not old enough?
So it seems it's a matter of mistaken identity. I did a little searching and discovered that Sams Club had a supply contract with Michelin to provide a line of low-cost, high mileage (meaning slow wearing, rather than good gas mileage) tires using the exclusive name "X radial DT" -- didn't understand what tire you bought until you revealed those details.
I still say, though, that you get what you pay for -- it's all a matter of marketing. Those tires, exclusively spec'd by Sams' Club, are strongly prioritized to be long-lasting at a low price, so it's a hard rubber compound, and without more expensive technology added (e.g., silica, special oils, etc.) that means not much traction. It's a matter of price, really.
Bottom lines: (1) yes, we were confused by the name, "X", you gave, rather than "X radial DT". And (2), again, Michelin and any other manufacturer makes tires to all sorts of priorities -- you picked the wrong model.
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