Bridgestone Potenza S001 Reviews - Page 11

I put the Bridgestone S001's on my Audi allroad v8 quattro and they have only lasted 28,000km to the wear indicators.
-Wet and dry grip are excellent
-Ride comfort is very harsh
-Tires wear very quickly but evenly on the quattro (treadwear rating 280 no surprises).
-I would recommend these tires for track and street cars who want good grip that don't mind a stiff/harsh ride, poor tire wear and a high price.

Bought the S001's after having the Bridgestone RE050a's previously. Dry grip is very good but Iv'e found them to be lacking in the wet. Biggest issue with these tires is the wear. It's terrible compared to the previous Bridgestones! I wouldn't mind if the grip was better but it isn't. Old RE050a's were giving me 16,000 - 18,000 miles. These gave me 11,000. Not impressed for what they cost.

Standard fitment on my A1 1.4 TFSI Black Edition (185PS) S-Tronic.

They have performed really well and even coped well with a small amount of snow (driven very carefully).

good rim protection, £105 fitted. Not had long enough to comment on wear, but grip is fantastic in wet & dry. Car always feels under control. slightly more noisy than i would like.

excellent tires!My last one set was Toyo T1R. Bridgestone look better!
Bridgestone dont come in the right temperature so much quickly than toyo but it isnt a big problem...
The grip is excellent when the come in the right temperature.

The tires are impressive in the wet, very high levels op wet traction and give very progressive wet handling making the car easy to control in the wet. Dry performance lets me down though, steering precision is lacking, the car feels bouncy and grip levels aren't what you'd expect from a max performance summer tire, especially from Bridgestone. I've had RE050A's in the past, they don't smear like the S001, Vrestein ultrac sessanta's outperform the S001 in the dry and Michelin Pilot PS2 are much better in the dry. Driving the S001 on the nurburgring just doesn't give the tight handling and grippy feeling, it doesn't inspire any confidence in handling like you'd have with Michelin. The car needs a couple of metres to settle down after kerbstones and bounces around a bit. Yes PS2 are more expensive, can't wait till my tire sizes are available in the Pilot supersport range.
Overall the S001 is ok on the streets, great for all round because of the wet handling, but they're just no performance tire.

replaced my front toyo t1r`s with the potenza s001,firstly on wear,these have been good for 14,000 miles with a fair amount of very hard cornering on country roads but the outside and inside edge lets these tires down by wearing quicker but still good enough tread left as i will be placing them on the back for there last few miles sitting just under 2mm on the edges,although better wear than the toyos that gave only 10,000 before the same problem of the inside and outside edges wearin too quickly,grip i found very good in the dry with a decent feedback on limits,i`m not one to corner very hard in the wet but they did have good grip to an extent with some understeer that i had confidence in them if i ever had to swerve in the wet i would still have decent control over the car,i haggled these tires down from £170 a tire to £135 a tire,the extra paid in comparison to £100 a tire for the t1r`s is worth those extra few thousand miles,just about to order falken fk452`s for the front and see how they fair up against them,review at a later date !

Brilliant, very grippy

After 16,000 kms the tires were still 5mm of tread but the tires were very stiff, loss of comfort, noise and lost effectiveness curve.

Exellent tire except that it don't last long.
I have a 50%-60% wear after 1 year of usage. (~16000km)
I am driving at an average speed of 140km/h.

The S001 replaced the PZero Rosso I had on my Volvo S80 T6. Originally the car came with P6000. Out of the three set, this is the best fit for a heavy car. Steering into a corner gives you lots of feedback early on. Tire treads still very new, but the handling compared to the Pirellis I had are way better. I will comeback in few months for an update on how they progress.

My wife's A3 was originally fitted with standard 16" wheels with Pirelli P7's 225/55R 16 91W. In fairness, this wheel and tire combination provided a very comfortable ride and was fine & economical (£70 a corner, P7's) for general family motoring. However, when pulling away on wet roads these narrow tires would some times spin even with the modest power of the 140bhp diesel, and didn't insprire confidence when pushing on.

I therefore upgraded to Audi's 17" 5 spokes thinking these would still provide a reasonable ride with the car's standard suspension, and widen the contact patch from 205 to 225. I'd been told 18" could make the ride very harsh/choppy on the standard Sport Back suspension.

After reading a number of EVO magazine tire reviews I went for Bridgestone Potenza S001's. Whilst EVO did rate the Continental Sport Contact 3 above the Bridgestones, I run Potenzas (RE040) on my Nissan 350Z and had always been very pleased with them on both road and track. With some hard negotiation I got them for £103 per corner all in which was far cheaper than I could get the Conti's reduced to. The Potenza S001's have a blocky tread pattern not dissimilar to the Conti's, and also a prominent rim protector ridge on the side-wall which is useful on the Audi 5 spokes as that design does seem a bit prone to the curb!

I have to say I'm delighted with this wheel & tire combination, it really has unlocked the potential of the car when you do want to push on.

Clearly it's impossible for me to give a like-for-like comparison given that I've gone up a wheel size. As you'd expect, the ride is firmer and there is more road noise than from the narrower 16", but to my mind still perfectly acceptable for a family car. The A3's clearly not a 'drivers car' but feedback through the Potenzas is near telepathic; grip in both dry & wet is very good and has eliminated the wet pull-away slip. You can corner in confidence within the limits of the standard suspension set-up, and braking is significantly more confidence inspiring.

I'd certainly say these tires are well matched to the A3 Sport Back and give a good combination of comfort and performance.

I can't give any feed back on wear on the A3 yet, but if my experience with the 350Z is anything to go by I'm expecting my wife to get a descent mileage from these tires. They do have an 'outside' face which means you can't rotate left-to-right to balance wear, which is a shame given the A3's tendancy to wear nearside rears.