2020 SUV 4x4 Summer Tire Test

The 2020 Auto Bild AllRad SUV / 4x4 tire test has looked at the popular 255/55 R18 tire size. While the tire patterns included in the test are aimed at "soft roaders", which spend 99% of their time on normal roads, Auto Bild still went to the effort of testing the handling and traction on gravel of all ten tires, along with traction on grass, mud and even sand!

Off-road performance is often an opposing quality to on-road grip, with dedicated off-road tires performing well in loose surfaces such as gravel and mud, but poorly on-road in the dry and wet.  It's worth noting, as we found out with our off-road tire test, repeatable off-road testing is extremely difficult, especially in mud, so these figures should only be used as a broad guide.

Dry

Dry braking is often closely contested, but the new Michelin Pilot Sport 4 SUV proved to have a near meter advantage over the nearest rival. It's also been a long time since we've seen a budget tire perform poorly in the dry, which is exactly what the Lexani LX-Thirty did, stopping the SUV 6.5 meters behind the Michelin!

The dry handling results were broadly the same, but this time Dunlop narrowly beat Michelin for the fastest lap time.

Wet

Michelin dominated the wet testing, winning all three tests.

Like dry braking, wet braking saw Michelin and Dunlop leading the way, with the budget Lexani tire taking over 20 meters longer to stop the vehicle. 

This time during wet handling, Michelin held the advantage, beating the Dunlop by a significant margin.

Surprisingly Michelin also performed best in the aquaplaning test, which is often an opposing quality for dry grip.

Offroad

Off-road is where things get really interesting / confusing. Usually, a tire that performs well off-road, doesn't perform on-road, but it seems Michelin have done their best to disprove that rule.

The Pilot Sport 4 SUV was the best in the wet and dry overall, and had the fastest lap time during gravel handling.

Travel traction was close amongst the top five tires, with Barum taking its first win of the test.

Grass traction was also won by the French manufacturer.

Maxxis won mud testing, with Dunlop and Michelin having to settle for second and third overall.

To highlight how interesting off-road testing is, sand traction was won by Cooper, wich was essentially last in mud and grass traction!

Environment

The Continental owned Barum Bravuris 5HM showed to have a significant advantage during rolling resistance testing, with the otherwise excellent Dunlop joint last.

All ten tires were in 3dB of each other.

And finally it will be no surprise that the Michelin was the most expensive set of tires on test, and the budget the cheapest! No wear testing was performed this time, so we're unable to work out what value each tire represents.

Results