Tire Reviews Tire Tests

Following on from the 32 tire braking shootout, Auto Bild have taken the fourteen best all season tires to the full test, and included a summer and winter tire as reference.

As with the Tire Reviews all season test, Auto Bild have ranked the new Goodyear Vector 4Seasons Gen-3 as the best all season tire, not because it was outstanding in one single area, but because it had a rounded performance in nearly all tests.

Every year, the German publication Auto Bild selects a tire size, finds as many all season tires as possible in that size, and tests them all in dry and wet braking, with the top 14 tires proceeding to the full all season tire test.

For the 2020 all season tire test, Auto Bild rounded up 34 all season tires in the common 205/55 R16 size, and a summer and winter tire as reference.

Every year, the German publication Auto Bild selects a tire size, finds as many winter tires as possible in that size, and tests them all in wet braking. The top thirty tires proceed to snow braking, then the top twenty overall to the full winter tire test.

For the 2020 winter tire test, Auto Bild rounded up fifty one winter tires in the rather huge 245/45 R18 size, and a summer tire as reference.

With the promise of one tire to work in all conditions, all season tires are a rapidly growing market segment.

To find out which of these all season tires is best, and whether they can match a summer and winter tire, the 2020 Tire Reviews all season tire test has tested nine of the best 225/45 R17 all season tires on the market, and included a summer and winter tire as reference.

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

As eight of the ten tires on test match tires 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.

The 2020 ADAC SUV All season tire test has tested seven all season tires in the popular 235/55 R17, and include a summer tire in the dry and wet, and a winter tire during snow and ice testing.

ADAC usually hides all their data and just gives numeric scores, but this year have released braking distances for all four braking tests. This might be to back up their conclusion from this test, which is even the best all season tires are deficient compared to a summer and winter tire combination.

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

The Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport RS, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R and Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R are regarded as three of the fastest road-legal track day tires in the world. To find out which of these three semi slick tires reigns supreme, I've borrowed a 991.2 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, and have use of Michelin's tire test facility in central France to run my own testing program.

Not being satisfied with just running dry handling, I'm going to test the tires in wet handling, dry and wet braking, and of course the all important dry handling, to find out which tire is fastest in which conditions.

Tire Reviews is a big fan of two wheels, and we gladly cover new motorbike tire launches whenever we're invited to them. Sadly, our driving is better than our riding, which is why we leave the high risk motorcycle tire testing to people who aren't highly likely to destroy the bikes and themselves trying to do a fast lap.

Luckily for us riders, the excellent British magazine Fast Bikes has tested five of the very fastest extreme performance / track tires, using a Suzuki GSX-R1000R, wearing 120/70 R17 and 200/60 R17 "hoops".

Tire 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 tire, 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". 

Here at Tire Reviews, we receive many different questions about tires, but one question that comes up more than most asks if modern retreaded tires, sometimes called "retread" or "remoulds", any good?

While we've not been able to test ourselves, tests from many years ago indicate that retreaded tires don't perform as well as even a budget tire. Car tires typically aren't designed to be retreaded (commercial bus and lorry tires are), so the retreading process can leave you with not only poor performance, but a product that could be classified as unsafe.

Naturally in the past few years there have been improvements in the car retreading process, and one brand in particular, King Meiler, has established a name for itself as "the" retreading brand.

To find out whether a modern retread can match a premium, or even a budget tire, the Polish magazine "Motor" have tested the King Meiler HPZ against the premium Continental PremiumContact 6, and a much cheaper Debica Presto HP.

The excellent Swedish publication ViBilagare has just released their 2020 summer SUV tire test. Testing seven of the most popular on-road 225/60 R18 tires, ViBilagare also included the the mild all-terrain Continental CrossContact LX2 tire as a very useful benchmark as to how much on-road performance you lose out on by fitting one of the very best mild off-road tires on the market.

As motorhome, van and commercial vehicle tire testing is new to the Tire Reviews website, we thought we'd start with the best of the best, and cover the 2020 Auto Bild 235/65 R16 C test, which used a VW Crafter van to test eight cargo rated all season tires, and included a summer and winter tire as reference!

As this is an all season tire test, Auto Bild not only tested the dry and wet performance of all eight tires, but also the snow ability of each pattern. Read on below for the full results of what is, another fascinating test by Auto Bild.

If you like detailed and confusing tire tests, you're in for a treat! The 2020 Sport Auto tire test has tested ten 245/35 R19 tires, using a Mercedes AMG A45 S, and is confusingly amazing!

Why is this confusing? Well, they've tested three different types of tires in the single test! The first group is the more "regular" ultra high performance tires, which includes the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5, Nokian PowerProof, Vredestein Ultrac Vorti, Toyo Proxes Sport, and strangely, the Continental SportContact 6. They've also tested two "UUHP" tires, the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S and the new Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport (which is the group we believe the Continental SportContact 6 should be included in as the PremiumContact 6 is the rival to the Asymmetric 5), and three track day tires, the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2, the unreleased Bridgestone Potenza S007 RS, and the Giti GitiSport GTR3.

Each year, the wonderful Swedish publication Teknikens Värld performs a summer tire test in Sweden. Their 2020 test covers ten 225/50 R17 summer tires, 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.

For 2020, the German publication Gute Fahrt has tested eight 215/50 R18 SUV tires using a VW T-Roc.

As with the 18" test in 2019, Gute Fahrt have chosen not to publish their handling data, instead grading each tires handling subjectively as "very good", "good" or "satisfying". Sadly as this doesn't really work with how the Tire Reviews database system is set up, we're representing each of the ratings as a number, with 3 being "very good", 2 "good" and 1 as "satisfying".

The 2020 Auto Motor und Sport summer tire test tested eleven 225/45 R18 ultra high performance tires 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.

Ultra high performance tire tests always make us happy, and Auto Bild do some of the best. For 2020, AutoBild have tested nine sports tires in the staggered 245/35 R19 and 265/35 R19 sizes using a Mercedes Benz C63 AMG.

Like our UHP tire test in 2019, Auto Bild have tested the very three best UHP tires on the market, the Continental SportContact 6, Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport, and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, along with some of the other well know UHP tires from Hankook, Vredestein, Falken and other brands.