Bridgestone ‘encouraged’ by top car tyre pence per mile

Bridgestone has called for context to be taken into consideration in response to Michelin’s decision to release fleet car tyre wear data that pointed to its tyres lasting the longest. For its part Bridgestone has added further detail, which the company believes shows that its tyres offer the best pence per mile. The tyre manufacturer came to this conclusion by taking Michelin’s own mileage figures and factoring in third party sell-out pricing data produced by Encircle marketing. According to this calculation, when mileages are divided by the initial purchase cost Bridgestone tyres come out on top.

In concrete figures this means that, with Michelin costing almost £20 more per 205/55 R16 tyre than Bridgestone in May 2012, despite its strong wear performance it is also 1 or 2 per cent more expensive on the front and 10 – 12 per cent more expensive on the rear axle. These calculations point to Continental being the most expensive of these top four brands (over a third more expensive in terms of pence per mile), with Pirelli coming in very close to Bridgestone (separated by 1 – 5 per cent in most cases and actually 1 per cent cheaper in one instance).

Andy Dingley, communications manager, Bridgestone North Europe, commented: “Based on these independent figures we’re really encouraged by our pence per mile performance against other premium manufacturers. Raw mileage numbers really need context to make them truly meaningful. Strength and durability are critically important elements of our product’s performance, but are not always considered when judging the true life cost of a tyre.”

Something else that is noticeable about Michelin’s data is that while the sample is undoubtedly large, it is also variable. For example in both the case of the front and rear axle figures that Michelin supply their own brand sample size is roughly four times that of Bridgestone’s and significantly more than the Pirelli and Continental products tested. Now this may of course be a natural happenstance of the product mix sold into the as yet unnamed fleet channel that Michelin pooled its data from, however, it could be argued that this does raise questions of statistical significance.

Neither Continental nor Pirelli have yet commented officially. 

Encircle Marketing monitors the “sell-out” tyre prices on the retail market and online, covering the four largest tyre markets in Europe. On average more than 34,000 prices per month from the UK (14,000) and Ireland (2,500), Germany (12,000), France (3,000) and Italy (2,500) are collected.