Tyre Reviews Tyre Tests
Summer Tyre Tests
All Season Tyre Tests
Winter Tyre Tests
Total Tests: 511
Most Tested Brand: Michelin (488 tests)
Most Tested Tyre: Dunlop Winter Sport 5 (63 tests)
Winter tyres are a hot subject at the moment, with new tests being released weekly. Usually winter tyre tests focus on the smaller tyre sizes winter tyres are often used in, meaning if you drive a performance car and are interested in ultra high performance winter tyres you have to hope the tyres tested in the smaller sizes have the same attributes in the larger sizes.
Read more...This years Auto Express UHP Summer tyre test comes at a rather odd time - issue 1131 released 8th September. While it might have come at a time when the country is starting to think about winter tyres, Auto Express have still done an excellent job writing 9 pages dedicated to 12 performance summer tyres over 10 different disciplines. To carry out these tests Auto Express borrowed the Contidrom in Germany, a fleet of Skoda Octavia test cars wearing the optional 225/45 r18 sized tyres and purchased 2 sets of each tyres tested at random to ensure the manufactures didn't send "special tyres".
Here are the results from the 2010 Autocar tyre tests for the RWD section of the test. To read commentary, and the results of the FWD tyre test click here
In the past few years budget and mid range brands have taken the tyre market by storm. Tyres like the Falken FK452, Toyo T1R and Uniroyal Rainsport 2 have proven to be excellent performing and cost effective compared to some of the premium offerings. This year however, it seems the premium manufacturers have stepped up a notch and all released excellent updates to their ranges. The 2009 Auto Motor und Sport [AMS] tyre tests was dominated by premium brand tyres and AMS believe premium cars, like the Mercedes E-Class used in this tyre test, should be run with premium tyres.
Most tyre innovations come from the big 6 manufacturers and patents are quickly awarded stopping the budget manufacturers replicating their discoveries. Due to this, AMS decided to test tyres from what it considers to be the "top 10" premium manufacturers. The big 6 are Goodyear, Pirelli, Continental, Dunlop, Bridgestone and Michelin and also included in the test is Uniroyal who are part of Continental, Vredestein which have been recently been bought by the Indian giant Apollo Tires, Nokian who are an independent manufacturer from Finland and Hankook, a Korean "mid range" brand who are quickly moving into the premium sector.
Read MoreWe'll keep this brief! In 2010 Auto Zeitung have tested 9 ultra high performance summer tyres on a 200bhp VW Scirocco.
The magazine covers aquaplaning resistance (where sensors determine the speed at which a tyre floats in 7mm of standing water), braking (from 62mph in both the wet and dry), a timed lap in the wet and dry, and how the cars respond on the limit. Added for this year, Auto Zeitung also tested the rolling resistance of each tyre using a dedicated machine.
Key highlights include...
Click to read onIt might still be August, but after an unusually snowy start to 2010 talk has already turned to winter tyres in the UK.
While we're waiting for the magazines to put together their 2010 winter tyre tests, here's one of the more interesting articles from 2009. This test is particularly good as it uses a powerful RWD car (Mercedes SLK350) which wears relatively wide 225/45 r17 performance tyres.
Each of the 8 tyres were tested in the snow, on wet roads and in the dry with the scoring emphasis bias towards wet weather and snow performance (these are winter tyres after all!)