Summer Premium Touring Passenger Car Tyre Tests

For the 2021 Sport Auto summer tyre test, the German publication have tested eleven tyres in the relatively small 195/55 R16 tyre size. As this tyre size is intended for smaller vehicles such as the Audi A1, Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 208 and other similar sized cars, Sport Auto used a Seat Ibiza for testing, and placed all eleven sets of tyres through the usual dry, wet and environment based tests.

For the 2021 ADAC summer tyre tests, the German organisation selected the popular 205/55 R16 and 225/50 R17 summer tyre sizes.

As usual with ADAC tests there is little raw data provided, instead the testers grading each tyre with a score, but this year we do get wear data (below) and even some of the testers subjective thoughts on the tyres, which is an excellent addition.

Without fail, each year German publication Auto Bild provides the most comprehensive overview of the summer tyre market by testing a huge amount of tyres ability in the dry and wet, in order to work out which twenty tyres deserve to be tested in their full summer tyre test.

For 2021, Auto Bild have tested 53 tyres in the most popular tyre size in Europe, 205/55 R16.

All 53 sets of tyres have their wet and dry braking results below, with the shortest 20 combined braking distances progressing to the full test, which will be on the website shortly.

This year Auto Express have tested ten 205/55 R16 summer tyres using a VW Golf. You can be forgiven if this setup sounds similar, as it's almost the same test as the Tyre Reviews 16" summer tyre test.

As eight of the ten tyres on test match tyres we used in our test, but the overall results differ in places, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look into what's different, and why that might be.

Do you want to know what tyre is best for every day, real world driving? In this test we take eleven of the very best 205/55 R16 tyres on the market, plus a well regarded budget tyre, to see exactly what tyre performs best in the dry, wet, comfort, noise and rolling resistance tests!

Tyre testing is incredibly complicated to conduct, and one of the most difficult parts of testing is good repeatability.

Take for example wet braking. To get the wet braking distance of a tyre, you don't just do the braking run once, you do it 6-8 times, delete the outliers then average out the results. Even on the most expensive test facilities in the world, with the most perfect sprinkler systems and perfect tarmac, you rarely get the same distance twice as there are so many variables, which means when you use a less than state of the art facility, results can be surprising.

This brings us on to this test by the Italian publication "al volante". 

Each year, the wonderful Swedish publication Teknikens Värld performs a summer tyre test in Sweden. Their 2020 test covers ten 225/50 R17 summer tyres, including the first test of the brand new Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance 2!

The unique Swedishness of the test means they don't perform dry handling, but instead the "moose test" which involves a sharp lane change at speed. Sadly, we can't database this, but you can see the results of the test in the commentary at the bottom of the page.

The 2020 Auto Motor und Sport summer tyre test tested eleven 225/45 R18 ultra high performance tyres using a BMW 3 Series.

While the group overall was extremely close, the winning Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5 and second placed Michelin Pilot Sport 4 were almost inseparable overall, with the Goodyear narrowly taking the overall win.

The 2020 Auto Zeitung summer tyre test has been published, and as usual they've tested a really interesting mix of twenty tyres in the popular 225/50 R17 size.

As 225/50 R17 tyres generally bias towards comfort rather than outright sporty performance, AZ tested with the new brand BMW 3 Series, and performed the usual array of  thirteen dry, wet, comfort and economy tests.

The talented guys at ACE Europe have just released their first summer tyre test for 2020, and interestingly they've tested nine 215/55 R17 summer tyres from the mid range sector of the market!

It's never a bad thing when a magazine goes to the effort of testing summer AND all season tyres in the same test, as it gives the motorist a good idea of the different balance of performances each tyre type has, so it's great to see Auto Navigator doing exactly this for their 205/55 R16 summer tyre test.

Not satisfied with just summer and all season tyres, Auto Navigator have included a "test winning" winter tyre, as well as worn summer and worn winter tyres (tread depth unknown!)

The Norwegian AutoMobile Federation (NAF) has tested seven summer tyre patterns in 205/55 R16, and included a premium winter tyre for comparison.

The winter tyre performed surprisingly well during the wet braking testing, which was tested between 18 and 25c, beating the Dunlop and Bridgestone summer tyres. Wet handling showed a little more weakness, with the winter tyre finishing last, but it was still within a few percent of the summer tyres.

The Swedish news paper Aftonbladet have tested thirteen 205/55 R16 touring summer tyres using a VW Passat.

Sadly the data is a little lacking in this test, but as the driving was done by the experts at Test World, you can be sure it was a proper tyre test.

The ACE / GTU tyre test is always a funny one, as they go to a lot of effort to test the tyres, but then provide no data at all, only the overview scores.

For this reason, we always keep the commentary low, but it's important to have the test results on Tyre Reviews, as the more tests published the better right?

Every year Auto Bild test over fifty tyres in wet and dry braking testing to decide which twenty tyres make it through to the full summer tyre test. In 2019 they have tested 53 patterns, using the popular 225/45 R17 summer touring tyre size.

The 2019 summer tyre test season is underway, and as always the first published is by the German motoring organisation ADAC!

This year ADAC have tested sixteen 185/65 R15 summer tyre patterns using a VW Polo, and interestingly included the Michelin CrossClimate instead of the Michelin Energy Saver+ as the Michelin "summer" tyre.

This year the Hungarian publication Auto Navigator have tested fourteen 205/55 R16 summer tyres, but also included an all season tyre (the Michelin CrossClimate), a full winter tyre, and most interestingly worn summer and winter tyres.

It's important to note that the worn winter tyre used was from last years test, whereas the worn summer tyre was 7 years old and had been stored in "sub optimal conditions". While the tread depth of each of the worn tyres isn't exactly clear, the worn summer tyre was at a huge disadvantage due to age and storage conditions. 

All tests were performed around 15c air temperature. Sadly aquaplaning wasn't tested by the magazine.

The 2018 Gute Fahrt test is a confusing tyre test for a number of reasons. Firstly is tests both summer and all season tyres in the same dry and wet tests, but fails to include the all season class leading Michelin CrossClimate. 

There's a lot of tyres in the 2018 Auto Bild 195/65 R15 test, so we'll keep the intro as short as possible and let the data do the talking.

It's worth keeping in mind, the twenty tyres chosen for this test have been through a 51 tyre wet and dry braking pretest. This means the tyres included in this test are some of the best tyres available on the market, had Auto Bild included some of the worst tyres in the pretest, the gap between the best and the worst tyres overall would have been much larger.

Every year Auto Bild test over fifty tyres in wet and dry braking test to decide which twenty tyres make it through to the full summer tyre test. In 2018 they have used the popular 195/65 R15 summer touring tyre size.

The spread of dry braking results was higher than usual this year. The best dry braking tyre on test, the Hankook, stopped the car from 62mph in 34.5 metres, and the worse 42.4 metres. This 7.9 metre difference might not sound like a huge amount, but it is the difference of stopping or hitting an object at around 26 mph!

The spread in the wet was even larger. The Bridgestone was best in the wet, stopping the car from 50 mph in 34.3 metres, where as the worst tyre on test took a massive 17.6 metres further, totaling 51.9 metres. That's over 4 car lengths further and a huge residual speed at time of accident.