Recommendations aplenty in associations’ 225/45 R18 tyre test

Sometimes a tyre test resembles a day with the mean kids at school, with a low-priced budget tyre invited to hang out – only to be later mocked as vastly inferior to its peers. But not the latest comparative evaluation from European motoring associations ACE, ARBÖ and GTÜ – while everybody doesn’t win a prize, all present are commended for one characteristic or another, with ACE confirming that “we couldn’t find a bad tyre in the wet.”

This isn’t particularly surprising, as ACE admits the test team concentrated on “premium and quality tyres.” The testers fitted ten brands of size 225/45 R18 tyre to a Mercedes-Benz C-Class and measured their performance in wet and dry conditions as well as in cost and environmental performance, namely external noise and rolling resistance. They declared eight of the ten tyres to be ‘highly recommendable’ and the remaining two ‘recommendable’.

Test winner is the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6, which gained 149 out of a possible score of 170. Runner-up the Continental PremiumContact 7 finished the test with 146 points, having taken first place in the wet testing but finishing third during testing in dry conditions (behind the Goodyear tyre and the Bridgestone Potenza Sport) as well as for economy/environment, tying third with five other tyres. Third place went to the Michelin Pilot Sport 5.