Please take the cycling survey . Sounds as if even the experts disagree. Basically, the Continental salesmen want to impress you with their knowledge so you'll buy their tires.
Most commercial organizations are that way.
It's called pride. Since either is equally easy to manufacture it wouldn't make a fig to Continental. As a commercial enterprise, Continental, and all other successful commercial organizations, do care what the marketplace wants. If, as a company, I produce the highest quality, leading edge technology widget at a lower cost than any of my competitors, yet can't sell enough to meet revenue requirements, I have failed. I need to produce products that provide the highest contribution margin per unit of scarce resource, and here I am wasting those resources producing superior but unwanted product.