Passenger Car Tyre Tests

While studded tyres don't have much use in the UK, for parts of the Nordic countries they are essential for safe mobility.

To find out which of the latest studded winter tyres are worth fitting, Swedish magazine Vi Bilagare have tested seven studded winter tyres in 225/50 R17, and included a studless nordic friction winter tyre as a comparison.

It's winter testing time, and as always, Auto Bild are leading the way! Following on from the 53 winter tyre shoot-out, Auto Bild have taken the top twenty 225/45 R17 tyres through to the full test, along with a summer tyre as reference. Each set of tyres has been tested in the dry, wet and snow using a RWD BMW 1 Series, and Auto Bild are one of the few publications which test for wear. It's an exciting test! (if you're into tyres...)

Winter tyre buying can be a confusing challenge, as there are now six types of tyre you can realistically fit to your car. But which is best? To find out, I test summer, all season, all weather, winter, extreme winter and studded tyres in dry, wet, snow and ice testing, covering handling, braking and grip.

Following on from the All Season tyre market overview, Auto Bild have published their winter version of the shootout style braking test.

For the winter test, Auto Bild have tested 53 winter tyres in 225/45 R17 in wet and snow braking. The two braking distances are combined, and the top twenty tyres go through to a full test covering all aspects of a tyres performance.

This year the German motoring organisation ADAC have tested sixteen winter tyres in the popular 185/65 R15.

With summer sadly coming to an end, now is a great time to start thinking about switching to all season or winter tyre options.

To help this purchase decision, the excellent German publication Auto Bild publish the results of their pre-tests, in order to select the best all season tyres to send through to their full all season tyre test.

This year Auto Bild have tested 31 all season tyres in 225/45 R17 in wet and dry braking, and the top ten will go through to the full test due next month.

The excellent UK automotive magazine EVO always seems to publish their summer tyre test late in the season, but it shouldn't be ignored as it's one of the best in Europe if you care as much about steering feel and feedback as you do ultimate grip.

This year, EVO have tested seven 225/40 R18 UHP tyres using a VW Golf GTI at the Pirelli test facility in Vizzola, Italy, and while the volume of tyres is surprisingly small for such a common size, the breath of testing was as vast as any European tyre test.

Track day tyre tests are always a welcome read, as those of us who use our cars on track are often super switched on to the differences the tyres can make. This year AutoMail.Ru have tested four track day tyres in 225/45 R17 using a Mazda MX5 Cup car, and included the Continental PremiumContact 6 as a reference "normal" tyre.

It's worth remembering the MX5 is a light, relatively low powered car, so the results from this test might be different on something heavier.

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?

Finnish magazine Moottori have recently compared eight 205/55 R16 tyre patterns that sit in the midrange price category!

While midrange tyres are cheaper than their premium rivals, they're not the cheapest tyres available on market, so in theory should still provide a reasonable level of performance, just offering better value.

Auto Bild's second summer tyre test of 2019 has tested eleven 245/45 R18 tyre patterns using a BMW 5 Series. This tyre and vehicle combination isn't an often tested setup, and has yielded some interesting results!

The Pirelli P Zero PZ4 (Sports Car variant) dominated the testing, with the shortest dry and wet braking, fastest wet handling lap and second fastest dry handling lap.

For 2019, Sport Auto Magazine has tested eight ultra high performance summer tyres in 245/30 R20 using a Civic Type R.

Sadly the new Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport wasn't included in the test, and instead the twice replaced Asymmetric 2 was left representing Goodyear. This meant the Continental SportContact 6 and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S could fight it out for the top spot overall.

This is going to be a long test! The German publication Auto Bild often perform the most thorough tyre tests of any of the traditional publications, and 2019 is no exception. After taking fifty three 225/45 R17 tyre patterns through wet and dry braking testing to establish the top twenty available in the market, Auto Bild have run the best of the 17" tyres through an extremely thorough full test, and even included the often omitted wear test!

For 2019, the German publication Gute Fahrt has tested ten 225/40 R18 summer tyre patterns using a VW Golf, but unlike in 2018 where they included all season tyres in the test, this year they've included a 17 and 19 inch comparison tyre.