winter tyres Archives - Page 72 of 88

Firestone Winterhawk 2 a Timely Arrival for Winter

Enhanced safety and driving comfort with the Firestone Winterhawk 2The new and improved high performance winter tyre gives you the reassurance of superior control of your vehicle. Comfort and economy create the perfect package.

With the winter months just around the corner, Bridgestone has introduced its newest Firestone cold weather tyre. The Winterhawk 2 is designed to offer excellent grip on snow surfaces plus enhanced performance characteristics on dry and wet roads – all this comes with, says Bridgestone, driving comfort and economy.

1st September 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

BCT Addition Makes VDB Total Private Brand Supplier

Product News

Van Den Ban’s (VDB) wide assortment of private brands serves a wide range of tyre market segments. And now that the company stocks the Chinese-produced Beijing Capital Tire (BCT) brand, VDB claims to hold all sizes and varieties in stock from budget tyres to high performance to SUV/4×4 tyres. “Last year we added BCT to our assortment and since then we can say we can supply all segments of the market, not only with premium brands, but also with our private labels”, says Cyril Versteeg, Commercial Manager with Van den Ban.

BCT sits at the budget end of VDB’s product portfolio and comes in a range of passenger car, (ultra) high performance, high performance, asymmetric and some light truck sizes. The S600 PCR range comprises 34 sizes from 13 to 16 inches in diameter, while UHP S800 and HP asymmetric S900 contain a total of 26 sizes and ranging from 14 to 19 inches.

7th August 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Deldo Gearing Up for Winter with New Catalogue

Product News

Deldo Autobanden is a European specialist in winter tyres. For many years the company has focused on this fast growing market and now offers over 25 brands in Car, Van, 4×4 and SUV tyres. Alongside Deldo’s understandable – considering their commercial viability for cold weather products – focus on the traditional ‘winter’ countries like Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the company is also ramping up its product range, thanks to the ‘studdable’ tyres from Wanli and Fortuna, for the Scandinavian market.

While both of these markets – the Germanic and Scandinavian – are familiar to the company on the basis of winter tradition, Deldo has also found great opportunities for both budget and branded winter tyres in Eastern Europe and the Russian republics. Winter tyres are becoming more important in other countries too, with significant growth in the Benelux, France and Italy. As a consequence, winter tyres are playing an increasingly important role in Deldo’s complete product range.

5th August 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Nexen “Providing Safety, Stable Driving All Around Europe”

Product News

Nexen Tyre, a company at the forefront of the Korean winter tyre market, believes that it has the overseas reputation not only for the company’s popular non-winter tyres, but also for its winter tyres.

The Korean company is attempting to penetrate Europe’s winter tyre market with its Euro-Win, Winguard, Winguard-SUV and Winguard 231 lines. The firm is also announcing for this season its brand new ultra-high performance winter tyre called the Winguard Sport, which, the company claims, “is ready to be the first runner of the premium UHP winter tyre both in the domestic and overseas tyre markets.”

4th August 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Cooper and Avon Boast Expansive Winter Range

Product News

Cooper Tyre and its subsidiary, the UK-based Avon Tyres, are both gearing up for the winter rounds with a wide range of options for seasonal drivers. Both brands are represented particularly strongly in the 4×4 sector with the Avon Ranger Ice and the Cooper Discoverer M+S and M+S Sport, while Avon alone caters for the winter needs of performance cars with the Ice Touring ST, both companies have small-to-medium passenger car options (the Ice Touring and the Weather-Master Snow H & V), while Avon leaves its parental brand to cater to the Van market (Van-Master M+S).

There has been an increasing demand for dedicated light truck and 4×4 winter tyres in recent years and Cooper Tire has responded to this requirement with the development of dedicated winter 4×4 tyre ranges alongside Avon’s own offering, the Ranger Ice.

1st August 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Kumho Address the Question: Who in the UK Needs Winter Tyres?

Product News

Kumho Tyres has been an established supplier of winter tyres for the Scandinavian and Central European markets and therefore has a wide range of treads to cope with all the varieties of adverse weather conditions that characterise the season in these parts of the world. For these markets, the weather is the overbearing reason for the comparative strength of the cold weather tyre market; they are the traditional stronghold for companies marketing products capable of dealing with the icy climate.

However, the UK – with its expanding, though still essentially low-key winter market – represents something of a challenge, even to an experienced marketer of the product such as Kumho. The company addresses this issue by immediately posing the question: Who needs cold weather tyres in the UK?

1st August 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

DEKK Partner Seek to Exploit “Most Important” Season

News

Managing director of DEKK Partner, the Norwegian retail co-operative that has 300 Nordic-area dealers, Leif Kristiansen recognizes that, for his organisation “the winter market is the most important season for DEKK Partner and all tyre dealers in the Nordic market.”

In this sector, winter tyres have an obvious place, a fact Kristiansen acknowledges when he states that “50 per cent of the turnover per year is in the period from the end of September to the end of December.” This fact of the market means that the company is somewhat dependent on the seasonal weather arriving on time at the beginning of November for the business to meet its financial targets.

29th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Performance in Changeable Conditions

Product News

The launch of a new tyre often involves an extreme test of the product’s capabilities – a 4×4 tyre may be demonstrated in the desert, a UHP offering on supercars at a racetrack. Pirelli, when introducing its new Winter Sottozero Serie II range, chose a glacier as the site to show off the tyre’s performance when pushed to the limit. And Pirelli didn’t just choose any old glacier – the Winter Sottozero Serie II tests took place high up in the Matterhorn region, so high up in fact that the test cars needed to be shipped in slung 50 metres below a helicopter. The logistics required for arranging the tyre’s launch was astounding, and when the actual day came the weather rewarded Pirelli with conditions that would make even the Yeti consider a quiet evening in.

25th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

GITI Tire Boosts Winter Range

Product News

GITI Tire is attempting to improve its foothold on the European winter market, building upon the Champiro range. The company, which is headquartered in Shanghai, China, is a self-styled top quality tyre supplier, and is the largest manufacturer in the booming tyre-producing nation. GITI accesses the European market through its sales and marketing office in The Netherlands.

The Champiro WT-Plus is a high-performance winter tyre for the premium passenger car sector, offering a full silica compound for optimal wet traction and a reduced rolling resistance. The company stresses the additional benefits, which include a directional tread design complete with variable shoulder blocks to increase cornering traction and stability, helping drivers achieve a quiet and comfortable drive; a circumferential centre rib providing optimum stiffness resulting in precise handling in all winter road conditions; and an advanced sipe design, which aids braking and traction properties on ice and snow, thus placing the WT-Plus within the sector addressing harsh winter conditions. The company is clearly confident in the Champiro’s ability to tackle competition in this segment, as it is increasing size options to cover 14 inches to 16 inches; from 185/70 R14 right through to 205/55 R16.

24th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Vredestein Aims for Icy Markets with New Arctrac

Premium, Product News

Last year’s Winter Tyre Review (T&A, September 2007) featured three Vredestein tyres designed to withstand cold weather. The Wintrac Xtreme and its SUV cousin, the Wintrac 4 Xtreme courted the difficult market of the safety and style-conscious, being winter tyres designed in aesthetic partnership with Giugiaro Design – the Italian design engineering firm. The Quatrac 3, on the other hand, had designs on those wishing for the safety features of a cold tyre, but didn’t want the hassle of changing tyres come the chilly season.

This year’s launch is a different animal: leaving aside the convenience and aesthetic concerns of other ranges, the Arctrac is for the committed winter tyre user in truly hostile conditions; a studded tyre with sturdy angular shoulders, whose natural territory is upon the very heavy frosts of countries surrounding the Arctic Circle, such as Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian nations.

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22nd July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Old Versus New

Product News

When it comes to the low rolling resistance debate, the gloves are off. This is particularly the case amongst the world’s leading tyre manufacturers, who each have their own brand of high-level tyre technology to offer, but are very much at odds about the benefits and theoretical pay-offs their tyres’ exhibit. In July’s Tyres & Accessories we examined Michelin’s argument that it’s all a question of technology. Or to put it another way, there needn’t be a pay-off between strong wet braking performance and low rolling resistance characteristics if you research and development department is sufficiently advanced. Until recently this concept had been taken as read, but Michelin’s various generations of Energy saver tyres claim to have out-teched this dichotomy.

Last month there was something of a disagreement between Michelin and Bridgestone with regard to the energy saving properties of their tyres. The “discussion” followed tyre test results in the French press, which found that there was “no significant difference” between fuel consumption results on the two manufacturer’s truck and bus tyres. This month Tyres & Accessories reports from the ContinentalSafetyExperience – a showcase of Conti’s latest technology including the chance to see the company’s response to the pay-off question in action. Continental was demonstrating its technologies as part of a ContiSafetyExperience event, which the company held at the OAMTC (Austrian AA equivalent) centre in Teesdorf, Austria.

21st July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Bridgestone Increases UHP Tyre Production in France

Product News

Bridgestone Europe has invested 32 million euros in increasing production capacity at its Béthune, France, passenger-car tyre plant. According to the company, the investment will extend the plant high performance tyre production output by up to 1000 tyres a day from 2009. The Bridgestone Béthune plant currently produces around 25,000 passenger-car tyres a day and employs more than 1,250 people. Bridgestone Europe operates seven manufacturing plants (in France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary), producing both passenger car and truck and bus tyres. The new production facilities will manufacture Bridgestone’s latest generation passenger-car tyres including ultra high-performance tyres and winter tyres.

11th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Tread Depth Check On The Move With ProContour

Product News

German company ProContour GmbH describes itself as “a future-oriented business” and it has just come up with a device that can measure tread depths of tyres in moving traffic.

Working on the principle of laser triangulation, the ProContour H3-D will make a significant contribution to road safety, believes the company. Statistics show that, in Germany, there are 55.3 million motor vehicles and 2.79 million trucks registered and, in 2005, 2.25 million accidents were recorded by the police, with 15 fatalities a day on German roads. In stark economic terms, the damage amounted to 32 billion euros.

7th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Reifen 2008: New Vredestein Winter Tyres, Maloya Rebranded

Product News

Dutch manufacturer Vredestein utilised the opportunity of Reifen 2008 to exhibit their newest addition to Vredestein winter range, the Snowtrac 3. The tyre is the company’s follow-up to their highly-rated, award winning bestseller – the Snowtrac 2 – and uses a different tread compound to its predecessor that the company says will provide greater levels of grip in winter conditions. Additionally, the company officially launched its new studded winter tyre: the Arctrac, which Vredestein claims will “come into its own in heavy frost.” The company also announced the rebranding of its Swiss Vredestein Group member, Maloya, a move that aims to appeal to “a young, modern and dynamic target group.”

7th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Could Laser Tread Reader Be the Next Speed Camera?

Product News

A new laser tread depth measuring system for moving traffic could become the next speed camera. And while speed cameras have become known as the driver’s nemesis, this idea has already been recognised for its marketing value. ProContour GmbH, the German company behind the H3-D device recently won a mark of distinction in the Reifen 2008 Innovation Awards in the Service/Marketing Ideas category. In fact, Tyres & Accessories has learnt that the German police force and one or two well-known tyre manufacturers have already expressed an interest in placing significant orders.

Working on the principle of laser triangulation, the ProContour H3-D is likely to make a significant contribution to road safety if enough end up being bought and operated. The moment T&A saw the device in action in Essen, all the surveys about a third of the UK car parc running on dangerous worn tyres sprang to mind. Obviously many consumers won’t change their tyres unless they are told to, so why not tell them?

7th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

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