Owners of the Bridgestone Adrenalin RE002 most consistently praise dry grip, followed by wet grip, with handling and steering feedback also well regarded. Quiet running and ride comfort attract substantially more praise than criticism. Wet grip is less unanimous than dry grip, with complaints from around one in ten, sometimes about abrupt loss of grip near the limit. Tread life is more divided, with ten critical accounts against 17 favorable ones and varying longer-use experiences. Later reviews written by the same people remain mixed rather than showing a consistent decline as the tire wears.
What owners mention most counted across 86 reviews
Great tire! Fully recomended by my side. Tons of grip on dry road. But tire needs to be warm! Best performance when hot outside. Good grip on wet road, not the best, but stil awesome. Its noisy when breaking hard, really noisy! I am really pleased , I drive fast, on the limit of the tire, and must say, limit on this tire is really high. Recommended ;)
I use them only on front wheels. They have very good grip at the limit even in wet weather. Although they give little too soft feeling from wheels on the edge, still not lose control.
They are quite noisy and not too good in fuel saving or wear time, but its a sport tire, so I dont take this as a problem.
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The dry grip is fantastic, slightly better than the Michelin's. The handling is great too. The wet grip is below the Michelin's, but no so far. I can't talk about the wear yet, we'll see.
The Exalto cost 40€ more, so the Adenalin are a big bargain. I'll buy them again for sure.
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Researching the Bridgestone Adrenalin RE002? Rate the tires you actually drive - and help the next buyer choose.
I run the tires in 205/45/16 w on my Clio Sport 182. They replaced the OEM Michelin Pilot Exlato Tires in the same size.
I use the car on the german Autobahn and B-Roads for sporty and everyday driving ans I have covered 2.500 Miles on the tires.
The sidewalls are too soft for the car`s setup (suspension still OEM). The car feels indifferent. You are not able to find a clearly defined braking point on B-Roads and on turn in the tires are far away from being precise. Where the tire stands out is in the noise and comfort level. It is the quietest tire I´ve ever driven.
In the Wet the tire is quite good and works well. If you drive it to its limits on B-Roads it gets tricky. I left the road and luckily just entered
the grass on one of my best known roads. This incident was definitely not caused by my driving style (6 witnesses, 40 mph, tires 300miles old) but by the low grip when the tire was new. This was a shocking experience I never had with another tire.
On the limit at B-Roads these tires offer a huge amount of grip when you have entered a corner but and the tire is "warm". Turn in is as the braking completely undefined and indifferent. No comparison to the Michelins. In the corners grip is good and there is definitely only a little bit of understeer. On the exit of corners there is a lot of grip, too.
So my overall verdict:
My mind is divided. On the one hand a very quiet, comfortable tire which offers a good amount of grip in the corners and in the dry.
On the other hand I wouldn`t recommend them for sporty driving style on B-Roads and sporty Cars. Imprecise on braking and turn in, when new a shocking low level of grip. It ruines driving fun on my car completely.
I left them in the garage and put my old (2007) and worn Michelin Exaltos on when I went on track and left them on the car afterwards. I think this says everything. Leaving new rubber in the garage and using the worn ones is not the sense of buying new tires.
My hint: Spent more money, buy Bridgestone Re050a (mainly for Track RE070) or Michelin Pilot Exalto 2 or Pilot Sport 3. More money to spent but an improvement over these "wannabe sporty" shopping cart tires!
tires performance has improved markedly over the years leaving the re002 with a slighly above average rating for performance.
not great but not bad either.
a bargain when tire shops have them on special.
i bought mine in a four for the price of three sale.
I decided to upgrade my 2006 Ford Fiesta LX Hatch (4 door) from the Bob Jane Xenon Z7s that were on there (they still had a year of wear left) before to the best tire I could find in my wheel size. I originally wanted to get Yokohama S.Drives but Bob Jane didn't have any however recommended the Potenza RE002s. I looked up reviews and decided to take these out.
Now I have to put this into perspective: When I drive my car down to the west coast of Tasmania, Australia and I floor it most of the way. These have some of the windiest roads in the country when going through Cradle Mountain/Wilmot (Google Maps it if you want) which I drove on the day I got these tires. I was cornering faster than my judgment told me to and yet these tires (damn near miraculously) never broke grip once. Now I know the Fiesta isn't a Chevvy Z06 or anything, but cornering hard is cornering hard and these tires were right up to the challenge and they never skipped a beat and drove as if the car was on rails.
I haven't had much wet weather testing (which is unfortunate) but the old Xenons used to spin like nothing else when taking off in the wet (even before they were worn). The new RE002s just stick to the road, no spinning in the wet.
The road noise is slim to none (minus the bumps but on bad roads the tires really can't do much).
The work car (2002 BA Fairmont) I drive in Melbourne had RE002s on it until I changed them earlier this week. It had done over 50,000 hard kms on it (before it was a work car) and yet the tires were still quite useable (one was chipped and another was bubbled in the wall so we had to change them). So even with a lot of wear they are still very useable and still very good.
For my Fiesta it cost $152 a corner and I couldn't recommend them more. I can now trust my car when I drive it because I don't think that I'm going to go off the road around a wide/hard corner. The extra money is worth it if you want to drive your car well.
Verdict: Buy these bloody tires. You will not regret it.
Been using these tires for track and daily use. I can't say anything bad about the tires regarding both dry and wet grip. Im actually surprised more with the wet grip because of its classification.
Road feedback was superb. I really feel that i am planted and the resposiveness should be spot on depending on your PSI
They wont let go of traction fast. They do however, when gets really hot, kinda slips already, which is an ordinary behavior of tires if it really gets hot or after its treshold. Started slipping after around 10 laps on the track (really pushed it hard)
After 4 trackdays, i really do see wear marks already. Just continue on rotating them every after events.
When used daily, its better to decrease PSI since its walls are stiff compared to others.
I can't understand why people are billing these as soft walled. These are the sturdiest tires I have ever seen - you can't distort them at all even before they are mounted on a wheel. This does reflect in the weight too as they have 1-2Kgs on the euro-tires.
This made fitting them extremely challenging, but once I got them over the rims and on the car you can appreciate why.
There is so little roll on these tires that the car feels like it's on rails. Bridgestone market them as a sporty upgrade for performance cars, and they live up to this notion well. I thought they would ride horribly being so rigid, but there is no droning or screaming road noise. In fact they are very comfortable and quiet.
Performance wise they are excellent. I have put 1000 miles on them since fitting so only just wearing them in properly, but they offer ridiculous amounts of grip and are very predictable as expected. As said, wet performance is great.
I would fit these to something heavier like a 350z or a hot saloon, as I think something with a bit more weight to throw around would benefit even more from the sturdy construction.
For comparison will give Continental Sport Contact 3
As this was my previous tires on this car. For a start, I can say that the tires look like semi-slick at first glance. Boards are rather stif in comparison with Continental and weighs 2.5 kg more which is quite. Tread depth is 7.8 mm. The first thing that impresses is that the tire is pretty quiet (again compared to Conti). Wet grip is perfect. Much more than expected for this type of tire. In a dry tires hold up well. In turn the car around a curve without hesitation, but stopping is not the strongest of their discipline. Definitely Conti responded more quickly and clearly. Because drive 4x4 car, I can not determine how well react to a quick start and rapid acceleration. It is still too early to be able to offer an opinion on how quickly wear out, but I do not think that will be as bad as Conti in that capacity.
I previously ran Hankook RS-2s (three full sets over the last few years) and was annoyed that were no longer available as i felt they suited the car really well, but i wasn't interested in spending significantly more on something like Yokohama AD08s.
I saw theses at a comparative and very reasonable price, so figured id take a punt.
So far, grip levels in the dry have been fantastic, in fact i would say greater than what i experienced from the hankooks. This came as a surprise as id expected to see a drop in dry at the gain of wet performance, both from what i had read and what i was looking for (found the hankooks fairly poor in the wet).
The sidewall is softer so there is a little more flex on turn in, but it's by no means a ruiner and the amount of grip more than makes up for it.
Initially i ran them at the same pressures as the RS-2 and they were a bit too soft and flexed too much, but since upping the pressures by a couple of psi, im now very happy with there responsiveness and there is plenty of feedback through the wheel.
I've yet to try them in the wet, but would be very surprised if the were any worse.
I am into my second set of these tires, having got 40,000kms out of the last set. A sensational tire, that simply won't let the road go in the dry.
The only issue I found was that they were absolute pigs when combined with a different brand/pattern of tire on the rear. I was ready to take them off, but was assurred that when the rear were replaced and all tires matched it would be better .... and it was. I was like someone flicked a switch.
