By their very nature, cold weather, or winter tires have more of a compromise built in than another other type of tire on the market, due to the wide range of conditions they need to perform in.
Developing a tire to perform well in snow conditions is actually relative easy for the tire manufacturers. Lots of edges, a nice wide tread pattern and you have a reasonable snow performance. It's the balance between snow and wet performance which is extremely important to a lot of European countries, where the cold wet conditions far out weigh the snowy or icy driving conditions, and where a lot of cheaper winter tires fail.
The Big Test
The average budget winter tires sacrifices too much wet performance to be considered a sensible option for the UK climate.
To highlight this, Auto Bild have taken 42 sets of winter tires, from premium to budget, and put them through a wet and snow braking "shoot out", to see which 15 tires go through to their group tests.
Also included in the test is a summer and all season tire to give a balance to the market overview.
As you'd expect the summer tire stops the shortest in the wet from 80kph, taking just 39.2 meters to stop. The best winter tire, the Semperit, is less than a meter behind in 40.1. While the gap between braking in the wet is extremely close, the results are somewhat different on snow. Where the Semperit takes 34 meters to stop from 50kph on snow, the summer tire which enjoyed a 0.9 meters advantage in the wet, skids up in 69.5 meters - a huge 35.5 meters longer than the winter tire!
This test also highlights the poor performance of budget winter tires in the wet. Using the Semperit as our benchmark, the worst winter tire took 56 meters in wet braking, stopping 15.9 meters, or 52 foot after the Semperit tire had stopped the car.
The all season tire, a Goodyear Vector 4Seasons kept honest to its name by winning neither test, but doing well in both disciplines, stopping the car in 46.4 meters in the wet and 38.4 meters in the snow, which would have the tire placed around 20th in the overall results.
Auto Bild will be taking the top 15 tires through to the shoot out due next month, conditionally recommend places 16 to 26, and do not recommend places 27 to 42, something we completely agree with.
The average budget winter tires sacrifices too much wet performance to be considered a sensible option for the UK climate.
Best UUHP Tires
Best All Season Tires
Best Winter Tires
