Passenger Car Tire Tests

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?

Finnish magazine Moottori have recently compared eight 205/55 R16 tire patterns that sit in the midrange price category!

While midrange tires are cheaper than their premium rivals, they're not the cheapest tires available on market, so in theory should still provide a reasonable level of performance, just offering better value.

Auto Bild's second summer tire test of 2019 has tested eleven 245/45 R18 tire patterns using a BMW 5 Series. This tire and vehicle combination isn't an often tested setup, and has yielded some interesting results!

The Pirelli P Zero PZ4 (Sports Car variant) dominated the testing, with the shortest dry and wet braking, fastest wet handling lap and second fastest dry handling lap.

For 2019, Sport Auto Magazine has tested eight ultra high performance summer tires in 245/30 R20 using a Civic Type R.

Sadly the new Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport wasn't included in the test, and instead the twice replaced Asymmetric 2 was left representing Goodyear. This meant the Continental SportContact 6 and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S could fight it out for the top spot overall.

This is going to be a long test! The German publication Auto Bild often perform the most thorough tire tests of any of the traditional publications, and 2019 is no exception. After taking fifty three 225/45 R17 tire patterns through wet and dry braking testing to establish the top twenty available in the market, Auto Bild have run the best of the 17" tires through an extremely thorough full test, and even included the often omitted wear test!

For 2019, the German publication Gute Fahrt has tested ten 225/40 R18 summer tire patterns using a VW Golf, but unlike in 2018 where they included all season tires in the test, this year they've included a 17 and 19 inch comparison tire.

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.

For the 2019 summer season Auto Zeitung have tested nine 235/45 R18 summer tires, and included the summer-bias all season Michelin CrossClimate.

The stand out performances go to the new Continental Premium Contact 6 and Michelin Primacy 4, both showing extremely well balanced test results, and also the new Maxxis Premitra HP5. The quality of Maxxis tires has quietly improving quickly over the past 12 months, and it's great to see the Premitra HP5 prove it's excellent price / performance ratio.

It's also worth noting, which the Michelin CrossClimate only finished seventh place overall, this is the only tire on test which has any sort of ability in the snow. The trade for snow performance is often dry grip, but the CrossClimate held its own in a full summer tire test, which makes it unique amongst all season tires.

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.

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.

Following on from the 195/65 R15 winter tire test, the excellent German publication Auto Bild have tested ten UHP winter tires in 245/45 R18.

The biggest shock in the test is the winner - it's the brand new Vredestein WinTrac Pro. This new tire from Vredestein proved to have Continental like qualities, displacing the Continental WinterContact TS850 P from it's usual top spot and performing well in the dry, wet and snow tests. The Continental WinterContact TS850 Pl, which has now been replaced by the Continental WinterContact TS860 S, proved that it's still a quality option and finished a very close second place.

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.

As in 2017, the German club ACE have tested all season and winter tires in exactly the same tests! On test are nine 185/65 R15 winter tire patterns, and three all season tires in the same size, and they used an Opel Corsa as the test vehicle.

All twelve tires were put through identical dry, wet and snow testing, and to further highlight the point that most all season tires are interchangeable with winter tires, the all season tires finished second, fifth and ten places overall.