Premium Touring Tire Tests

Winter tire buying can be a confusing challenge, as there are now six types of tire you can realistically fit to your car. But which is best? To find out, I test summer, all season, all weather, winter, extreme winter and studded tires in dry, wet, snow and ice testing, covering handling, braking and grip.

Following on from the All Season tire market overview, Auto Bild have published their winter version of the shootout style braking test.

For the winter test, Auto Bild have tested 53 winter tires in 225/45 R17 in wet and snow braking. The two braking distances are combined, and the top twenty tires go through to a full test covering all aspects of a tires performance.

Warning, lots of data ahead! For the 2019 winter, Auto Motor und Sport have tested eleven of the best winter tires in the 215/55 R17 crossover SUV size.

The biggest plus of this test is the sheer amount of data they've produced, as they've rated the tires both objectively and subjectively in a lot of categories.

This year the German motoring organisation ADAC have tested sixteen winter tires in the popular 185/65 R15.

With summer sadly coming to an end, now is a great time to start thinking about switching to all season or winter tire options.

To help this purchase decision, the excellent German publication Auto Bild publish the results of their pre-tests, in order to select the best all season tires to send through to their full all season tire test.

This year Auto Bild have tested 31 all season tires in 225/45 R17 in wet and dry braking, and the top ten will go through to the full test due next month.

For their 2019 summer tire test, Auto Express have tested eight SUV tires in the popular 235/50 R18 size.

It's never a bad thing when a magazine goes to the effort of testing summer AND all season tires in the same test, as it gives the motorist a good idea of the different balance of performances each tire type has, so it's great to see Auto Navigator doing exactly this for their 205/55 R16 summer tire test.

Not satisfied with just summer and all season tires, Auto Navigator have included a "test winning" winter tire, as well as worn summer and worn winter tires (tread depth unknown!)

The Norwegian AutoMobile Federation (NAF) has tested seven summer tire patterns in 205/55 R16, and included a premium winter tire for comparison.

The winter tire performed surprisingly well during the wet braking testing, which was tested between 18 and 25c, beating the Dunlop and Bridgestone summer tires. Wet handling showed a little more weakness, with the winter tire finishing last, but it was still within a few percent of the summer tires.

The Swedish news paper Aftonbladet have tested thirteen 205/55 R16 touring summer tires using a VW Passat.

Sadly the data is a little lacking in this test, but as the driving was done by the experts at Test World, you can be sure it was a proper tire test.

The ACE / GTU tire test is always a funny one, as they go to a lot of effort to test the tires, but then provide no data at all, only the overview scores.

For this reason, we always keep the commentary low, but it's important to have the test results on Tire Reviews, as the more tests published the better right?

The 2019 Auto Motor und Sport tire test has tested eleven crossover SUV tires in 215/55 R17. While this fitment isn't the most exciting fitment in the world, usually being found fitted to vehicles like the Vauxhall Mokka, Skoda Karoq, Seat Ateca, Hyundai Kona and Audi Q2, it is a high growth segment thanks to the huge sales of these types of cars.

The results of this test are fairly straight forward, with only one note. The Continental PremiumContact 5 tested has been replaced by the PremiumContact 6, which undoubtably would have fared better than the seventh place overall.

Every year Auto Bild test over fifty tires in wet and dry braking testing to decide which twenty tires make it through to the full summer tire test. In 2019 they have tested 53 patterns, using the popular 225/45 R17 summer touring tire size.

The 2019 summer tire test season is underway, and as always the first published is by the German motoring organisation ADAC!

This year ADAC have tested sixteen 185/65 R15 summer tire patterns using a VW Polo, and interestingly included the Michelin CrossClimate instead of the Michelin Energy Saver+ as the Michelin "summer" tire.

While studded tires aren't suitable for the normal UK winter, Tire Reviews does have a lot of international readers, which is why we're covering this excellent studded winter tire test from the Swedish publications Vi Bilägare.

Why this one? Well, they've used a Volvo V30 to test seven studded tires in the very common 205/55 R16 tire size, and they've also included a friction studless nordic winter tire.

As always, we keep our coverage of the Auto Express tire tests to a minimum, instead encouraging you to go and see the full article on the Auto Express website (link in comments), but there is one aspect of the test we'd like to mention.

The 2018 Auto Motor und Sport [AMS] winter tire test has tested eleven winter tire patterns in the popular 205/55 R16 winter tire size, using a Seat Ibiza.

For 2018, the German publication Auto Zeitung have tested nine SUV / 4X4 winter tire patterns in 235/60 R18 using an Audi Q5.

The tires on test covered the premium and midrange segments, with a single budget tire included, the Wanli Snowgrip S1083. The Wanli tire was less than half the price of the most expensive tires on test, so it will be interesting to see whether the Chinese manufactured tire can improve on past performances.

The 2018 Auto Bild SUV / 4x4 winter tire test has used an Audi Q5 to test ten 235/60 R18 winter tires, with the Goodyear UltraGrip Performance Gen-1 SUV proving to be the best tire on test thanks to an excellent all-round performance.

Surprisingly Pirelli edged out Continental to second place, with a brilliant result for the Pirelli Scorpion Winter. This tire has been on the market a number of years now, and historically hasn't tested as well as Goodyear or Continental, so there must have been and update for the 2018 winter season.

The Continental Winter Contact TS850P SUV rounded out the top three, with its only real weakness appearing during the important dry braking tests.

Following on from the 27 all season tire braking shootout, Auto Bild have published their excellent 2018 all season tire test. Testing the best ten 195/65 R15 all season tires from the braking test, Auto Bild have done an incredibly thorough job putting all the tire patterns through the usual array or dry, wet and snow testing.

The weekly UK publication Auto Express has just published their 2018 winter tire test! This year Auto Express have tested eight winter tire patterns in 205/55 R16 using a VW Golf.