2020 ViBilagare SUV Tire Test

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 usual, we'll summarise the important data from the test below, and recommend you head over to the brilliant ViBilagare website for a more in depth look.

Dry

Dry braking was led by the new Michelin Pilot Sport 4 SUV, stopping the test BMW X3 0.3 meters ahead of the second placed Bridgestone Turanza T005 and 0.7 meters ahead of the third placed Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5. The premium mild all-terrain tire was considerably worse than even the worst pure on-road SUV tire, stopping the vehicle a huge seven meters later than the test winning Michelin.

Dry handling was again led by Bridgestone, Goodyear and Michelin, but this time the Goodyear and Bridgestone SUV tires had the advantage, tying on a 66.4 second lap time, with Michelin 0.4 seconds behind. Again, the mild all-terrain tire struggled, early 2 seconds off the pace.

Wet

Wet braking was again won by Michelin, with a more significant advantage over the rest of the tires than in the dry.

Michelins wet advantage continued to the wet handling and straight aquaplane testing, with Goodyear, Bridgestone and Nokian also performing well in all wet tests. Sadly, the mild off-road tire didn't perform any better in the wet than it did in the dry, losing all three of the wet tests.

Environment

ViBilagare did an excellent job of rating each tires subjective comfort rating, which is how the tire feels and sounds in the cabin, rather than a simple drive by noise test.

All eight tires were close, but as we've seen in other tests the Nokian Hakka Blue 2 SUV and Vredestein Ultrac Satin both provide excellent levels of comfort while driving on all surfaces. The mild all-terrain tire finally excelled in a test, matching the very best of the on-road tires in comfort levels.

The subjective noise test results were close. ViBilagare also tested objective drive-by external noise at two different speeds on two different surfaces, so head over to their website to see the full results.

The rolling resistance testing was also close, but as seen in other tests, the Bridgestone Turanza T005 has an advantage over its premium rivals.

Results