Austrian car workshop and automotive product fair AutoZum is the venue for the world premiere of the latest Vredestein tyre for the van and light truck market. Visitors to the show, which began yesterday and runs until Saturday 21 January, can view the Vredestein Comtrac 2 All Season tyre at the Apollo Vredestein stand (0702) in Hall 10.
Next year it will be four decades since Goodyear introduced the first all-season tyre, the Tiempo, and to celebrate the anniversary – and raise awareness of its investments in innovation for this product segment – the tyre maker has partnered with artist and inventor Dominic Wilcox to reinvent typically one season items and make them fit-for-purpose all year round. The outcome of this partnership, including solutions for skateboards, barbecues and convertible cars, can be viewed at the www.hugtheroads.com/allseasons website.
Back in the middle of November, Sentury Tire launched its first run-flat tyre under the Landsail brand name. Now the Landsail 255/55 R18 109V all-season run flat tyre ha been developed and tested, Sentury has taken it to the market and says: “This new product is the evidence of Sentury’s strength of innovation” and is a justification of the firm’s ‘“Top Ranked Product is Made in China” advocacy’.
No fewer than nine car magazines and motoring associations in Germany published tyre tests for the 2016/17 season, and always there have been winners and losers. Continental belongs firmly in the former category, with its tyres finding themselves, without exception, top-rated. The company’s various WinterContact products landed ‘highly recommended’ and ‘exemplary’ ratings. Other well-known names, including Goodyear Dunlop, Hankook, Michelin, Nokian and Pirelli, all came away with top ratings in some tests. Open the table below for an overview of this winter season’s tyre test winners and losers.
Recognising the attractiveness of all-season tyres to the majority of the UK market, leading weekly magazine Auto Express has conducted its second comparative test of six products in the segment. Testing on the bestselling 17” size, 225/45R17, the magazine used the independent Test World facility, with support from Hankook, to test in snow, and Continental’s Contidrom to test in cold and wet conditions to represent winter, and dry conditions to represent summer. The full test also included two leading seasonal tyres, the Goodyear UltraGrip Performance Gen-1 winter tyre and the Continental ContiSportContact 5 summer tyre, which showed that all-season products continue to represent a compromise; however the performance gaps in the tests most relevant to UK drivers may surprise critics of year-round tyres.
According to GfK sell-out data for the UK and five other key European markets, demand for all-season tyres in our region grew 37.7 per cent year-on-year in 2015. Last year’s increase followed similar and even greater growth in the preceding few years, and this marked rise in demand means all-season tyres are a very appealing product for tyre makers. The company credited with creating the all-season segment now shares the market with a host of premium, mid-range and budget products, yet continued innovation over tyre generations has helped Goodyear retain a competitive edge.
Matt Smith, UK director of Falken Tyres, believes tyre makers can no longer avoid the topic of all-season tyres, and following Michelin’s entry into the segment he expects to see more and more players throwing their hats into the ring. The Falken brand has been represented in the all-season market for a number of years now; the Euroall Season AS200 was launched in 2013 and remains Falken’sole all-season product in our market.
To meet increasing demand for all-season product in the UK and throughout Europe, Landsail recently introduced its 4Seasons range. The line-up launched in the UK as a Grouptyre private brand some six months ago, which a choice of 25 size options available for PCR and van applications.
When it comes to choosing the most suitable tyre for the winter months ahead, Firestone declares that its Multiseason represents the most compelling proposition for motorists. It is, in the words of Firestone brand manager Stuart Attfield, the ideal “halfway house” to combat the unpredictable conditions so often encountered in the UK.
Solus HA31 is Kumho Tire’s latest all-season tyre, and it has now all but replaced the Solus Vier KH21 in the UK market; though the older pattern is currently still available in some sizes. According to the tyre maker, the HA31 is “the ideal choice for drivers of all sizes of passenger car seeking optimum performance and reliability in all weathers.”
Kumho’s latest all-season tyre, the Solus HA31, has been accorded a Japanese Good Design Award. So too has the Kumho Eco Sense SE11 – a pattern specifically designed for environmentally friendly and electric vehicles but which, unlike the HA31, isn’t currently available in the UK market.
TÜV SÜD has shared its thoughts on winter and all-season tyres. While the testing and certification specialist doesn’t wish to cast doubt over the safety advantage winter tyres offer when driving on snow and ice, it also considers all-season tyres a suitable choice for motorists who only drive in flat or lowland regions and spend a lot of time on the motorway.
Hot on the heels of the news that Michelin’s year-round summer tyre (the CrossClimate) has beaten all-season tyres at their own game in a magazine tyre test (see “Summer tyre wins all-season test”, which reports on the ADAC test originally published on 22 September), Michelin previewed the next generation of its category-defying product – the CrossClimate+ at the Paris Motor Show at the start of October. In addition to the original product’s unique summer-tyre-with-a-three-peaks-mountain-snowflake qualification, the latest version is said to improve winter performance and consistent whole tread life performance. This latter point picks up on what appears to be an increasingly important theme to Michelin – that tyres should performs consistently well through right up to the 1.6mm legal tread depth limit (see “Michelin reaffirms opposition to 3mm replacement” for more on this).
The results table for the 2016 Auto Bild all-season tyre test saw last year’s winner and runner-up – the Goodyear Vector 4Seasons and Michelin CrossClimate – swap places. This occurrence means that this year’s size 205/55 R16 all-season tyre test was in fact won by a summer tyre, as Michelin considers its CrossClimate a summer fitment designed and legally approved for year-round use. Call it what you like, at any rate the Auto Bild team deemed the Michelin CrossClimate the pick of the ten-tyre bunch, and awarded it the test’s only ‘exemplary’ rating.
A recent comparative test of all-season tyres from Germany suggested these products deliver less than optimal performance when driven on dry roads. The question of all-season versus dedicated seasonal fitments has once again arisen in the latest tyre test from auto motor und sport magazine. In this evaluation of four size 215/60 R17 H/V tyres – the sort of rubber often found on SUVs such as the VW Tiguan, Skoda Yeti or Vauxhall Mokka (which served as test vehicle) – only one protagonist gained the top ‘recommended’ rating.
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