Grip on the summer
The range of summer tires is huge, sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees. In this test we tackle tires in size 225/45 R 18 from the A-brands, but also the somewhat less well-known tire manufacturers participate. The tires are on a nice and dynamic mid-sized car, a BMW 3-series, which means we can take a good look at the dynamics, for example. But the performance on wet roads also weighs heavily in the assessment.
If you need new tires, you will be faced with difficult choices. A look at the tire trade sites shows that the offer is overwhelming. There are between sixty and eighty brands in various price ranges, but which one should you choose? It is best to observe the following rules.
- Don’t buy a pig in a poke, but find out about the tire’s performance potential based on expert testing.
- Don’t wait too long to order, the test winners increase in price as demand increases, or are sold out quickly.
- Make sure you compare offers from online and specialized tire shops, and always ask for prices including mounting, balancing and disposal of old tires. Incidentally, you can also save money in a completely different way, because drivers simply replace their tires too quickly, according to a Michelin study.
- Therefore, first measure the profile depth of your old tires, ideally with a profile gauge (only costs a few euros) in the most important tread grooves. Only when the tread depth is less than three to four millimeters or the rubber is more than six years old should you consider replacing it.
This is at the same time a way to save money and at the same time do the environment a favour. You can’t determine which tire is really the cheapest on the basis of the purchase price alone, as our cost analysis shows. At the end of our tire test, the price-performance ratio, taking into account the expected service life in kilometers in combination with fuel consumption, throws a spanner in the works for many candidates.
The candidates
During a first safety check, we test the braking distances of all test participants, which we have purchased from independent shops, measured on wet (initial speed 80 km/h) and dry road surfaces (initial speed 100 km/h). Only the twenty best braking tires qualify for the main round of the test. In addition to most premium test participants, a few low-priced tires from manufacturers such as Linglong, Maxxis, GT Radial and Giti make it through this round.
In the main round:
- Hankook Ventus S1 evo³
- Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6
- Pirelli PZero PZ4
- Yokohama Advan Sport V107
- Continental Premium Contact 7
- Michelin Pilot Sport 5
- Linglong Sports Master
- Falken Azenis FK520
- Maxxis Victra Sport 5 VS5
- Toyo Proxes Sports 2
- Kumho Ecsta PS71
- Sava Intensa UHP 2
- Dunlop Sport Maxx RT 2
- Nexen N’Fera Sport
- GT Radial SportActive 2
- Bridgestone Turanza 6
- Uniroyal RainSport 5
- Fulda Sport Control 2
- Giti Giti Sport S2
- Kleber Dynaxer UHP
Insufficient for the final round
21 Ceat SportDrive
22 Federal Evolution ST-1
23 Avon ZV7
24 Cooper Zeon CS8
25 Lassa Driveways Sports
26 Laufenn S Fit EQ+
27 Sumitomo HTR Z5
28 Gripmax SuperGrip Pro Sport
29 Vredestein Ultrac Vorti +
30 Apollo Aspire 4G
31 Firestone Roadhawk
32 Infinity Ecomax
33 Sportiva Super Z+
34 Barum Bravuris 5HM
35 Matador MP47 Hectorra 3
36 Radar Tires Dimax R8+
37 Viking ProTech NewGen
38 Riken Ultra High Performance
39 Platinum RP420 Summer
40 Orium Ultra High Performance
41 Semperit Speed ​​Life 3
42 Tomason Sports Race
43 Imperial EcoSport 2
44 Zeetex HP6000 eco
45 Rotalla Setula S-Race RU01
46 Minerva F205
47 Tracmax X Privilo TX3
48 Tristar Sport Power 2
49 Triangle Sportex TH201
50 Zeta Alventi
Wet road surface
Driving behaviour: In terms of wet handling, the more expensive products from Pirelli, Goodyear and Continental offer significantly better performance. Among the budget brand tires, the Maxxis Victra Sport 5 and the Advan Sport V107 from Yokohama surprise with dynamic and harmonious driving characteristics.
Side Grip: Good lateral grip is the basic requirement for safe driving. The expensive tires of the premium manufacturers, especially the Pirelli P Zero PZ4, can clearly distinguish themselves from the rest of the field. On low budget tyres, on the other hand, our test car slid out of the bend over the front wheels as if it were driving on soap.
Brakes: There is a difference of almost seven meters between the best braking tire on wet surfaces, the Hankook tire, and the Fulda, which finished last in this part of the test, finished twentieth in the pre-qualifying. The performance of the low-budget tire shows how much worse it can be, with an additional seventeen meters of braking distance.
Aquaplaning and cornering aquaplaning: The fifth generation Uniroyal RainSport lives up to its name as a rain tyre. The GitiSport S2 can also effectively absorb or displace water under the tread. Smaller reserves offer Sava, Kleber and Nexen.
Dry road surface
Brakes: During emergency braking at an initial speed of 100 km/h, there is a seven meter or one and a half vehicle length difference between the best braking tires from Goodyear and Hankook and a low budget tyre. At the end of a traffic jam, this would mean that a collision with the low budget band would take place at a speed of 41 km/h.
Driving behaviour: Maximum safety and excellent dynamic driving characteristics mainly offer the candidates from Pirelli and Goodyear, but with the products from Giti and Uniroyal, the BMW feels a bit spongy.
Sound (when driving by): The legislator requires less and less noise nuisance, so we also look at the rolling noise of tires. Kleber’s Dynaxer UHP sets a good example with low noise production.
Lifespan: How many kilometers does a tire last before it reaches the legal minimum tread depth (1.6 mm)? We perform this so-called wear test on a dynamometer. The Goodyears achieve by far the best result with more than 63,000 kilometers. The Chinese Linglongs are already worn out after half of that mileage.
Price/Lifespan: A cheap tire can turn out to be an expensive purchase in practice. There are major differences in this test item. If we convert the purchase price to the expected mileage, the Goodyear costs €8.70 per 1,000 kilometers, while the more expensive Pirelli with lower mileage costs more than double (€19.51 per 1,000 kilometers).
rolling resistance: The lower the force required to simply keep the wheel turning, the better the tire can reduce fuel consumption. At the top of the table, products from Bridgestone and Kleber impress with their low rolling resistance with neat results, while Yokohama disappoints at the bottom with far too high values.
Extensive results and graphs
All results are also presented in graphs, as is an overview of all tires and their performance. We cannot show these on the web page, but you will find them in the PDF that you can download on this page.
Price comparator
With the AutoWeek Car Tire Price Comparison we offer you a handy tool to find the best offers on summer tires. The price comparator currently provides an overview of the full range of 16 different tire suppliers. Also here are the results all tire tests of the past 9 years.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl