Tire Tests

We test the dominent Michelin Pilot Super Sport against the new boy to the max performance tire segment, the Continental Sport Contact 6! Read on for the full details

The 2016 ACE magazine all season tire test covers ten all season tires in the popular 205/55 R16 tire size using a VW Golf, and includes a summer and winter tire as benchmarks.

Once again, the test highlights the fact that current all season tires, with the exception of the Michelin CrossClimate, should be considered as slightly tweaked winter tires and have all the drawbacks of the winter rubber in warm dry and wet conditions.

Testing nine of the latest max performance tires, EVO have chosen the popular 235/35 R19 size, using a Ford Focus ST at Continentals circuit in Texas for the 2016 EVO Summer Tire Test.

The 2016 Auto Express summer tire test has just been published, and it's the first test to have the "holy 4"! The new Dunlop Sport Maxx RT 2, Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3, Michelin Pilot Sport 4 and Pirelli P Zero PZ4 have finally been tested together at the same track, on the same car (VW Golf GTI), in the same 225/40 R18 size!

The Test World ultra high performance summer tire test puts thirteen 225/40 R18 tire patterns through the usual array of wet, dry and environment testing using a VW Golf GTI.

Sadly, there's no Michelin Pilot Sport 4 in this test, with Test World testing the older Pilot Sport 3 pattern, but they have included the new Goodyear and Dunlop tires.

This year Sport Auto have chosen 235/40 R18 as their ultra high performance tire test size. Sadly, this resulted in a couple of the key new tires being left out, so Sport Auto also tested the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 in 225/40 R18 and the Continental Sport Contact 6 in 235/35 R19 to get an approximate idea of how they compared, but excluded them from the final results.

It's not often we see a proper off road tire test, but this one by the South African Magazine "Drive Out" seems to tick all the boxes.

It takes ten mud terrain (M/T) tires in 265/75 R16, sticks them on a 4x4 Ford Ranger pickup truck, and puts them through wet, gravel, rock and endurance tests to find out which tire will be the most useful for hardcore off road use.

Off road vehicles don't always spend all their time off road, and the new generation of "soft-road" vehicles can go their entire lives without seeing so much as a muddy verge.

For this reason, the German "Off Road" magazine have chosen to test six 215/65 R16 tires on an Audi Q3, which are designed to spend 99% of their life on the road.

With SUV and 4x4 vehicles quickly becoming the most popular vehicle type in Europe, more and more magazines are providing dedicated tire tests for SUV sizes.

This year, Auto Motor und Sport have tested nine SUV tires in the crossover 215/60 R17 size using a VW Mokka.

This year the German magazine "Gute Fahrt" have tested nine all season tires in 205/55 R16 using a VW Golf, plus summer and winter tire for comparison.

While the full results are summarised below, we thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at how the all season tires compared to the summer Continental EcoContact 5 and winter Dunlop WinterSport 5 included in the test.

This year the German AutoBild magazine have taken the 15 best tires from their 205/55 R16 50 tire braking shootout through to the full test, and the result is another impressive win for Hankook!

The 2016 Auto Bild SUV and 4x4 tire test looks at seven of the latest tires for the quickly growing "softroad" vehicle segment. These latest softroaders have sporty driving characteristics, and spend most of their time on road, yet should still retain some performance on grass or gravel.

One VW Golf wearing 205/55 R16 tires, 50 different tire patterns, and a lot of wet and dry braking tests gives us a good overview of the market in 2016. The dry test was braking from 62 mph, and the wet from 50 mph.

The test we've all been waiting for is here, and it's round one to Continental.

The 2016 Auto Bild Sports Cars tire test placed six maximum performance tires through their paces on a Jaguar F-Type, in 255/35 R20 front and 295/30 R20 rear sizes.

The new Continental Sport Contact 6 was tested against the reigning performance tire king, the Michelin Pilot Super Sport, and the result was surprising.

Testing in 225/45 R17, the GTU test is the first test to include the new Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3, Dunlop Sport Maxx RT2, Falken Azenis FK510, Toyo Proxes T1 Sport+ and GT Radial SportActive amongst the fourteen tires tested! Sadly, the new Michelin Pilot Sport 4 was absent from the test, but we can't have everything at once.

Much like the 225/45 R17 test ADAC published at the same time, the ADAC 185/65 R15 tire test looks at sixteen premium and mid range tires, but this time has selected tires intended to be fitted to smaller town and city cars.

The biggest surprise of the test was this time delivered by Vredestein, with the Sportrac 5 dominating the test, and beating the wet weather master Continental Premium Contact 5 in the wet tests. The Vredestein must have gone through a life cycle update, as in 2015 the best result it could manage was fifth overall, and over placed near the bottom of the tests it took part in.

The 2016 ADAC 225/45 R17 summer tire test is a classic ADAC by-the-numbers tire test, with the results driven from data rather than subjective scoring.

Of the sixteen tires tested, at least three patterns have already been replaced, with the Michelin Pilot Sport 3, Toyo Proxes T1 Sport and GT Radial Champiro HPY already superseded by the Michelin Pilot Sport 4, Toyo Proxes T1 Sport+ and GT Radial Sport Active in late 2015.

Goodyear and Dunlop are also noticeably absent from this test, with the newly released Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3 and Dunlop Sport Maxx RT2 missing.