2016 ACE Mid Range Summer Tyre Test

Test Summary
Wet Braking	Nexen N Blue HD Plus
Dry Braking	Nexen N Blue HD Plus
Value	GT Radial Champiro FE1

The first summer tyre test of 2016 is a curious one. ACE, the Automobile Club Europa, are often first to publish their regular summer tyre tests, but this year their first tyre test exclusively features midrange tyres.

Testing ten 195/65 R15 tyres on a VW Golf, ACE argue that the most important consideration for 90% of motorists is price, which is why they've chosen to tests tyres as cheap as 35/euros per tyre.

Sadly, ACE didn't include a reference premium tyre manufacturer to benchmark the performance of the midrange group, but did include Hankook and Nexen tyres, both companies now making excellent products, and winning OE approvals on premium car manufacturers such as BMW.

The Results

In the dry, the results were close. Dry performance is a relatively easy task for cheap tyre manufacturers to master, and of the ten tyres on test the Nexen N'Blue HD+ took the top spot, the Hankook Kinergy ECO K425 in second and the Sava Intensa HP and Pneumant Summer HP4 joint third.

In the wet the field spread was much wider. Wet performance is harder to master than dry performance, which was dramatically highlighted when the worst performing tyre, the GT Radial Champiro FE1 stopped the car more than 15 meters behind the test winning Nexen N'Blue HD+. The Hankook and Pneumant tyres which scored highly in the dry also scored strongly in the wet, taking the top three positions, with only the Barum Brillantis 2 in fifth having a much better time in the wet than it could manage in the dry.

All ten tyres were relatively close when looking at fuel efficiency and ride comfort, but this time the test-losing GT Radial scored best overall.

Finally, when looking at price, the test-winning Nexen and second placed Hankook were the most expensive tyres on test, reaffirming you largely get what you pay for with tyres. This is a view the ACE testers agreed with, noting the extra purchase price was more than justified for the higher performance of the tyres.

Full results below. Please note the "Misc" column is the combined rolling resistance, noise and comfort scores.