Summer Premium Touring Tire Tests

It's the 50th anniversary of the ADAC tire test, and to celebrate the German automotive body have tested fifty summer tires in the popular 205/55 R16 tire size, and have included wear testing for every tire!

There's a lot to unpack in this test, so we'll dive straight in! Headline notes, there are two Michelin tires in this test, the Michelin Primacy 4+ and the energy saving Michelin e.Primacy, the Continental on test is not the new PremiumContact 7, it's the previous model, the Continental PremiumContact 6, and Continental also have the new Continental UltraContact in the test, which is meant to be a lower rolling resistance and higher mileage tire for those who drive a lot of distance!

In this test, we'll be finding out what the best premium touring summer tires on the market are!

I'm going to try and keep this as condensed as I possibly can as we have 13 sets of tires in this test including the newest and best from Continental, Michelin, Hankook, Pirelli, Bridgestone, Vredestein, Kumho, Toyo, Nankang and more! This should also be the world's first test of the Continental PremiumContact 7!

Auto Express tested seven sets of 235/55 R18 SUV tires for their 2022 summer tire test.

We are very late in the season for this one, so we're not going to write too much on this. For 2022 Auto Zeitung tested ten crossover SUV tire sizes in 215/55 R17 using a Ford Puma.

The excellent testers at AZ were obviously happy with the majority of the tires tested as they gave out seven awards to the top seven tires! It's also worth noting the Continental tire in this test was the ultra low rolling resistance EcoContact 6, not the PremiumContact 6 you'd expect.

Sadly AZ didn't get the chance to do any offroad testing, not that these tires are intended for much offroad use, but if you would like to see how these sorts of tires perform on dirt and grass you can check out the Tire Reviews SUV test here.

If like me you've been wondering exactly how low rolling resistance / eco / EV tires differ from their regular counterparts, this is the test for you!

The wonderful people at the Swedish publication ViBilagare have tested ten sets of tires in the popular 205/55 R16 size, and included "normal" AND "eco / EV" tires from Continental, Michelin and Nokian. This means we have the Continental PremiumContact 6 vs EcoContact 6, Michelin Primacy 4 vs e.Primacy and Nokian Hakka Blue 3 vs Green 3 (these are the Nordic specific versions of the Nokian WetProof.)

Why no eco / low rolling resistance / EV tires from Goodyear and Bridgestone? This test highlights the different approaches of certain tire manufacturers, and while Tire Reviews isn't sure on Bridgestones philosophy, Goodyear firmly believe that EV specific tires aren't needed if you make all your tires EV Ready, by focusing on low fuel consumption and excellent grip in all conditions for every tire.

Autobild are at it again, with the best SUV / mild 4x4 summer tire test you'll see all year (Tire Reviews sadly isn't doing one)! The German publication have tested ten leading SUV tires in the popular 235/55 R18 tire size using a VW Tiguan, and have managed to test the tires in the usual range of tests covering the dry and wet performance of the tires, but also test them on grass, dirt, gravel and even sand!

To add even more awesomeness Autobild included the multiple award winning Goodyear Vector 4Season Gen 3 all season tire. There's been a number of driver reviews on Tire Reviews claiming that an all season tire is actually pretty cabible in certain offroad conditions, and now we get to see!

The 2022 AutoBild summer tire is here! As usual, the test started out as a wet and dry braking test of fifty sets of tires in the popular 215/55 R17 size, with the best twenty one moving through to this full test. Not only have AutoBild managed to test the new Hankook Ventus Prime 4 and Kumho Ecsta HS52, they've also put all twenty one sets of tires through a wear test, and included an (unnamed) all season tire as a reference in the grip tests!

The Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance 2 won the test by combining good grip in the dry and wet, very low rolling resistance and the best wear on test. Even though it wasn't the cheapest tire, when AutoBild divided the purchase price by the projected mileage it also proved to be the best value tire on test, a very impressive showing from Goodyear.

For the 2022 ADAC tire test, the German publication have chosen the small 185/65 R15 tire size usually fitted to city cars and hatchback vehicles.

Sadly, as usual there's no actual data provided behind the scores, but ADAC have graded and commented on all the tires in detail which you can read below.

For the 2022 ADAC tire test, the German publication have tested a crossover SUV size of 215/60 R16 (this test) and a smaller 185/65 R15 tire size which can be read here.

It's the first Tire Reviews SUV tire test, and as usual, we're trying to do this as properly as possible!

We have 8 of the most popular SUV tires in 235/55 R18, including the Michelin Primacy 4, the brand new Goodyear EfficientGrip 2 SUV, the extremely popular Uniroyal RainSport 5, the new Hankook Ventus S1 Evo3 SUV, the Nokian WetProof SUV, the Vredestein Ultrac Satin, the Avon ZX7, the BFGoodrich Advantage SUV, and a budget tire.

It seems like every year there's a tire test that doesn't follow the norm, and this year it's the ACE / ARBÖ / GTÜ summer tire test. 

The test starts out as a regular summer tire test, there's nine tire patterns in the popular 225/45 R17 size, and they tested using a VW Golf which is the standard test car. However, once you get into the results, things get a little confusing.

Firstly, no data is provided by the testers, just a points system which makes an accurate analysis of the results difficult. Secondly, the test gives weighting to the price of the tires, but doesn't test wear, which means a tire which is cheap to purchase scores well, even if it has a lower overall value due to high wear.

But strangest of all are the overall results. 

Following on from the massive 53 tire braking test, Auto Bild have taken the best twenty 205/55 R16 tires through to further testing, which includes wet and dry handling, aquaplaning, rolling resistance, noise, and a rarity in tire testing, wear!

As the 2021 Tire Reviews summer test is covering UHP and SUV sizes, this will be the most complete reference we have this year for the 16" summer tire market, however if you'd like to watch a 16" summer tire test, you can check out ours from last year here.

For the 2021 Sport Auto summer tire test, the German publication have tested eleven tires in the relatively small 195/55 R16 tire size. As this tire size is intended for smaller vehicles such as the Audi A1, Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 208 and other similar sized cars, Sport Auto used a Seat Ibiza for testing, and placed all eleven sets of tires through the usual dry, wet and environment based tests.

The 2021 Auto Bild All Rad SUV test has tested ten SUV tires in the popular 215/60 R17 size. While the German publication used a Jeep Renegade for testing, this size is also fitted to vehicles like the Nissan Qashqai, VW Transporter, Renault Kadjar, Toyota C HR and many other popular crossover SUVs.

As always Auto Bild have done a great job testing, as not only have they tested in the dry and wet, they've also conducted FIVE off-road tests. Given these sort of vehicles rarely see any activity outside of the school run, the tests have a low weighting in the overall results, but it's certainly excellent data if you ever plan to take your crossover SUV on grass, gravel, sand or mud!

For the 2021 ADAC summer tire tests, the German organisation selected the popular 205/55 R16 and 225/50 R17 summer tire sizes.

As usual with ADAC tests there is little raw data provided, instead the testers grading each tire with a score, but this year we do get wear data (below) and even some of the testers subjective thoughts on the tires, which is an excellent addition.

Without fail, each year German publication Auto Bild provides the most comprehensive overview of the summer tire market by testing a huge amount of tires ability in the dry and wet, in order to work out which twenty tires deserve to be tested in their full summer tire test.

For 2021, Auto Bild have tested 53 tires in the most popular tire size in Europe, 205/55 R16.

All 53 sets of tires have their wet and dry braking results below, with the shortest 20 combined braking distances progressing to the full test, which will be on the website shortly.

Motorcycle tire testing is the most difficult type the tire testing available, and as such we don't get a many good motorbike tire comparison tests as we do for car and SUV.

Fortunately in 2020 the UK motorcycle magazine MCN managed to test six of the best sports touring motorbike tires using a BMW R1250RS.

The only objective test included was a 70-0 mph dry braking (below), the rest of the results were taken from a 22 mile road route over many different surfaces, which two riders tested blind and rated the tires for steering, confidence, stability, ride quality and feel.

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.

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!

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".