Tire Reviews Tire Tests
Summer Tire Tests
All Season Tire Tests
Winter Tire Tests
Total Tests: 511
Most Tested Brand: Michelin (488 tests)
Most Tested Tire: Dunlop Winter Sport 5 (63 tests)
Winter tires can be a problem in the UK. Mainland Europe are very good at putting smaller wheels and tires on, but in the UK where even the most modest town hatchback is being fitted with 17 or 18 inch wheels as standard, and performance car now being fitted with 19 or even 20 inch wheels, finding a test covering larger winter wheel sizes can be difficult.
Fortunately Auto Bild Sportscars is there to offer us some guidance for the 2014 season, and have tested 235/35 R19 winter tires on a BMW M135i. Sadly, they only managed to find six patterns to test, compared to fifty in their 205/55 R16 tests, but it gives us a good indication of what winter tires are like in larger sizes.
The 2014 Auto Motor Und Sport tire test was carried out in Sweden and Germany, and covered ten winter tires in 205/55 R16.
The 2014 Auto Bild winter tire test tested sixteen 225/50 R17 winter tires across fifteen disciplines, covering snow grip, wet grip, dry grip, rolling resistance and comfort.
Starting with fifty different tire models, Auto Bild put every tire through a winter tires toughest test - wet braking. Auto Bild then took the top twenty winter tires from wet braking through to snow braking, and once it had combined the wet and snow braking distances for the top twenty, it chose the top sixteen tires for this more thorough "full" test.
It's the test we look forward to all year, the Auto Bild winter tire shootout.
2014 sees Auto Bild testing fifty different winter tires in 225/50 R17. As usual, they test all fifty tires in wet braking from 50 mph, then take the top twenty through to a snow braking test from 31mph. The top fifteen from this test then go on to the full winter tire test, where Auto Bild crown the best winter tire of 2014.