Vredestein Quatrac 5

This is my second review of these tires as I ended up using my van for work over the past winter so clocked about another 15000 miles. I swapped the rears with the fronts and the edges of the fronts were fairly worn and I was suffering with a lot of wheelspin and dangerous braking. The swap improved the braking to the point of not dangerous over winter but it was still below average, handling also improved but on the cold roads I was still getting a lot of wheelspin. One particularly bad trip up north on a motorway run I was suffering extremely badly with aquaplaning even with around 6mm of tread left on them. I swapped them out after with a pair of Michelin cross climates which pretty much solved all my handling, grip, aquaplaning and braking issues. I kept the worn ones on the back and they were fine for the rest of the winter with no problems at all there. Now it's summer I've switched those back to the front and inflated to 45psi cold to get the last use out of them before replacing with the less worn ones. The increased pressure seems to have improved the grip, braking and handling from what it was before. In the warm and dry they are better handling than the cross climates although still not as good in the wet or on the brakes but do seem better than before. I also had some snow driving with the less worn pair on the front before swapping to the Michelins and although they are not as good as those in the cold, wet and ice they actually worked better in snow for me. The Michelins look at least half worn after just 6000 miles on the front so considering the cost difference I'd say the Vredestines are a better tire unless you are doing a lot of driving in bad conditions. In which case I'd probably try the Goodyear Vector 4's which will be going on my Golf diesel this winter. As I said in the last review the Quadrac 5's were pretty good all round for the first 12,000 miles, I don't think the Cross climates would even last any longer than 12,000 miles so the Vredestines win by default. The aquaplaning on the front with the hardly worn tires is my biggest issue and the reason I won't buy these again. The newer version is supposed to be 10% better for that but that's not good enough. Make it 25% and I'd be interested. The Michelins have not aquaplaned once and they are down to about 4mm. The worn pair still on the van is down to about 3mm tread after approximately 20,000 miles on the front and 10,000 on the rear. They are bald on the outside edges but still legal as you only need 1.6mm on 75% of the center tread in the UK.

These have been the best tires I've had and are easily comparable to the set of cross climates I've previously had on my old car. I bought these when I finally ran the tread down in the initial bridgestone set which came with my car which I felt did well to get to 28k miles (they were OEM models though so I'd be surprised if off the shelf ones lasted that long). These however are on 32k miles and now they're about done so I've definitely had my use out of them. Many garages tried to put me off these tires, likely because they didn't get a good deal on the price, so I ended up buying them online for around 75% of the prices I was quoted elsewhere. I've also has a lot of people turn their nose up thinking it's some cheap brand but I have to explain that actually they're just not that well known over here. They were superb in the wet and despite having a lower wet grip rating the the Bridgestone's which the car came on these for outgripped those tires by far in the wet. You could feel the car scrambling to get away from the lights or junction in the wet with the Bridgestone's and up until the tread has significantly worn down I've never had that. The road noise definitely isn't the quietest I've had (hence the slightly lower rating on that category) but they are large tires so they're never going to be the best with that anyway and it's not something I can say ever bothered me. They are quite low profile too so they are less forgiving in a car with a sportier suspension in terms of ride quality but in terms of being able to feel the road underneath they did just fine with that.

I have these tires on a MK2 VW Caddy SDi 1.9 diesel with not much over 60bhp. They have now covered around 12,000 to 15,000 miles, fronts are down to 5mm with heavy wear on the edges and the rears are down to 7mm. Most of my driving has been on road trips through Europe in summer in very hot temperatures with a fairly heavy load, I mainly use a car for day to day driving. In the dry these tires perform as well as all but the best summer tires although they are starting to drop off with regular wheelspin occurring even in the dry in recent times. The van will understeer a bit at the limit but it is to be expected on a front drive which combined with the coilovers handles nearly as well as my BMW 1 series. In the wet handling is also good on corners but wheelspin is now nearly as bad as any tires I've experienced when launching or accelerating hard. For the first 10 to 12 thousand miles wheelspin wasn't a problem in the wet. Braking wise in the wet even when the tires were new they were only average, now they are close to being dangerous with planning needed in bad conditions, in an emergency situation you are going to crash. I believe the performance drop off may be due to the excessively hot conditions the tires have been mainly used in as heat cycles will harden rubber, the fact that the fronts have barely worn down much more than the rears show that they may have been overheated when barreling down the alps and doing a couple of laps of the Nurbirgring. When I happened to be using the van after not driving it much for a while it rained and I had no chance of stopping from a not fast speed for a junction, luckily I timed the traffic while I was locking and unlocking the wheels so as not to crash as I pulled straight out in front of someone. Now I am very steady whenever the rain starts to fall or I make sure to drive something else and will swap the tires around as soon as the summer starts to end. If performance is still unsafe when braking in the wet I will purchase a pair of Michelin Cross Climates for the front as according to the tests they maintain performance until they are on the legal limit. I can't stick with dangerous tires no matter how much tread they have left, they are great still in dry conditions and would recommend them if you can get them for a good enough price. I've also got Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons on my 1 series, the Michelins were too expensive for those wheels, so far the Goodyears have impressed although they don't seem quite as good as these Vredestines were when new in the dry. I haven't had the pleasure of snow and ice driving with the Vredestines but on cold tarmac in the winter they out grip most summer tires in corners but are a bit weak when braking again. For the record the van has had new brake pads, discs, fluid and I've cleaned all the dust out of the drums, plus the shoes are within the service limit. All done since I've had these tires, plus it has gone through 2 MOT's. Most of my driving has been easy going except on occasion, rolling resistance is very good, on long motorway runs at 50mph I was averaging close to 70mpg. Normal UK driving gets me mid 50's to the gallon. Overall the Quadrac 5 are good but if you are keeping the vehicle allow them to need replacement within 15,000 miles unless you are happy with sub par / dangerous wet weather performance. You can buy better tires but if the price is right still worth a look.