Pirelli P Zero PZ4 Reviews - Page 5

15k to get down to 2.5mm. Almost all UK B road. Some “eco” driving, some pushing a bit. Moved to Pirelli’s from Avon’s. Night and day better, not worth comparing. Far more interesting to compare to the Goodyear F1 Asym 6 I fitted after the PZ4s. The PZ4s felt like I’d fitted new dampers on the the Skoda. Not as quiet as the Asym 6 but still a pleasant low-pitch noise. Comfort is higher on the Asym but sportier on the PZ4s. I find the PZ4s balance is a touch further towards the front axle on the estate VRS than the completely neutral Asym 6. Both tires maintaining their same balance in the dry and damp (I say damp as the roads I drove on don’t get any standing water regardless of how much it’s rained) With the PZ4s I want to push the car harder, be less precise and get the car sideways. But the VRS’s stability control doesn’t like that and even with the stability turned to sport it’s pretty unpredictable how it will brake the wheels. With the Asym 6 it’s more fun to be precise, clipping drains and catseyes, enjoying balancing front and rear grip, the VRS’s stability control likes that more. At “kids in the car” brisk pace the Asym 6 is more fun. On your own, pushing harder, the PZ4s give more feedback. Both lose traction predictably with the PZ4s being a fair bit noisier when it does. The PZ4s seems very pressure sensitive. I settled on 36.5psi for summer driving - 1.5psi either way feeling either harsh or sloppy. The Asym doesn’t seem to care what pressure’s in them. Overall the Asym 6 is a more rounded tire. I can see why it wins all the tests. The PZ4 will never beat it in a test unless subjective (sporty) feel is weighted very highly and even then the Asym might nudge it. What would I buy next time? I ask myself this a lot. When used as a family car the Asym wins every time. But for driving pleasure…..I have an alternative route to work that takes 40 mins and has some of the most famous sections of driving road in the south of England. On the PZ4s I’ll often go the longer fun route, on the Asym 6’s I hardly ever do, staying on the smoothly meandering B roads!

I have used 3 sets of non PZ4 P-Zero on my previous car, as I was happy with their performance. On the contrary, i will not replace this PZ4 (AO Sport cars version) with the same ones. I have read the rest of the comments, and I fully agree with most of them. The tire has strong areas such as very nice feedback, dry grip, wet grip under low water quantity, low noise when new and reasonable comfort (much better than the Hankook S1 Evo2 R01 I had before), but its two drawbacks are too heavy: First, wear is too high. I am changing the front ones (FWD car) with just 20.000 km, while I have always been able to run at least 30-35k from previous tires under the same routes and speeds. Second, aquaplaning resistance when new is low but acceptable, but it gets simply scary when the tread depth is below 3.5-4 mm. It is now at 3 mm, and I have been overtaken twice by a track, as the car was aquaplaning at only moderate speeds (90 km/h), while the rest of the traffic was moving wihout issues. I consider totally impossible to keep the tires up to the legal 1.6 mm depth. I don´t think they found the right balance in the design.

I recently replaced Dunlop RT2's on my Audi S6 C7.5 with Pirelli P Zero PZ4's. The RT2 was really good in the wet with good resistance to aquaplaning but they never gave much confidence in dry handling or feedback. I fitted the PZ4's following a top review in Evo magazine. They are a good more aggressive/sporty looking tire (if that is of any importance) with good rim protection. Dry handling is good, they seem to have a more rigid sidewall than the RT2's and inspire more confidence, better grip and accuracy in dry cornering. They are a little noisier than the RT2 but not excessively so and the ride is a little harder - which in fact suits the car. What I was not expecting is the poor (I mean really poor) aquaplaning resistance. General wet handling is ok but driving at speed (60mph+) through standing water on the motorway scares the shit out of me - they are awful. The tires at this point have only 1,000 miles on them so too early to comment on wear rate. The RT2's I used for 22k miles by which time they were down to 4mm, I replaced them after a succession of punctures - not sure I'd buy them again but they were at least sure footed in the wet. I won't be buying the PZ4 again solely because of their poor wet performance.

Full disclosure: I have a general dislike for Pirelli tires. My experiences from 'way back when' have always been bad to mediocre at best, with decent dry handling, but exceptionally poor wet handling (very inconvenient in wet countries such as the Netherlands). So I tend to stay well clear of Pirellis and recent experiences with the brand are pretty much non-existent. However these came as stock with my Arteon, and are of the official VW variety with 'seal-inside' or however VW brands that. Having recently swapped out my winter tires for the Pirellis I finally got a taste of driving them. My impressions are that they were more noisy and a little less comfortable than I expected/would have liked, but steering and wet performance (what I would have considered their 'nemesis' if you'd have asked me before trying them) were a pleasant surprise. Of the 1500 km with these tires, I'd guestimate that about 50% of those were on the German autobahn, with speeds varying from 80 to 230 km/h. The car feels steady and stable even when the autobahn gets a bit undulating (southern parts of Germany, in very hilly terrain), while driving at high speeds. At those autobahn speeds, it also means that less than perfect surfaces feel like driving along cobblestones, but the tires performed still performed admirably when it came to handling. The big downside was that with these surfaces the tires very clearly started to transmit serious noise into the car though, making it a less than pleasant experience, effectively forcing lower speeds because that's simply tiresome on long distance driving. Most notable reason for me personally to at least not buy this VW specific variant of the tire again was that I managed to get a screw puncturing my virtually brand new tires despite the proclaimed self-sealing abilities of the tire. Yes, I am aware that they only claim a 5mm (yes, just half a cm!) of puncture protection into the tire interior, but my experience has proven (to me at least) that the extra cost of this 'feature' is not worth it since it's apparently easy to punch through. Couple this with my personal dislike (as stated above) it means I would not recommend this tire.