Winter Passenger Car Tyre Tests

The weekly UK publication Auto Express has just published their 2018 winter tyre test! This year Auto Express have tested eight winter tyre patterns in 205/55 R16 using a VW Golf.

As in 2017, the German club ACE have tested all season and winter tyres in exactly the same tests! On test are nine 185/65 R15 winter tyre patterns, and three all season tyres in the same size, and they used an Opel Corsa as the test vehicle.

All twelve tyres were put through identical dry, wet and snow testing, and to further highlight the point that most all season tyres are interchangeable with winter tyres, the all season tyres finished second, fifth and ten places overall.

Following on from the 51 winter tyre braking test, the excellent German publication Auto Bild have promoted the best 20 tyres to their full winter test, which covers every aspect of the winter tyres performance.

As always, an (unnamed) summer and all season tyre have been included as reference, and to make a change from the past few years, it isn’t the remarkable Continental WinterContact TS860 taking the top spot overall…

This year the German motoring orginisation ADAC have tested winter tyres in 175/65 R14 and 205/55 R16.

Both tests continue Continentals winter dominance, with two win for the Continental WinterContact TS860. 

This year the German motoring orginisation ADAC have tested winter tyres in 205/55 R16 and 175/65 R14. 

Both tests continue Continentals winter dominance, with two win for the Continental WinterContact TS860. 

Second and third places were taken by the sisters brand Goodyear and Dunlop, with all three of the leading tyres proving to offer an excellent balance of winter performances.

This year AutoBild have placed 51 195/65 R15 winter tyres through wet braking tests, with the top thirty tyres also being tested for snow braking performance. Only the top twenty have gone through to the full Auto Bild winter tyre test!

With the best winter tyre on test stopping the VW Golf in 34.3 meters, and the worst tyre on test at 49.8 meters, you can see why it's extremely important to judge a winter tyres performance as much on wet grip as it is snow grip.

While studded tyres aren't suitable for the UK climate, they are the best way of staying mobile in extreme winter conditions. Each tyre can have hundreds of studs, which bite into ice with far more grip than a studless friction winter tyre can give. There are of course drawbacks to studded tyres, they're very noisy, and they give up a lot of dry and wet performance when compared to a European winter tyre, but in climates such as Russia and the Nordic countries where you are likely to be driving on ice for weeks at a time, there's little alternative.

We're a little bit late with this one, as it's likely the UK has had most of its bad weather for winter 2017/18, however we can't resist covering a winter ultra high performance tyre test, especially when they use a RWD Toyota GT86 as the test car!

For this test, Sport Auto magazine fitted the GT86 with ten different patterns of 225/40 R18 sports winter tyres, and put the tyres through the normal dry, wet and snow testing.

For 2017 the Polish publication AutoCentrum has tested eight studless winter tyres in 185/65 R15. As with the other winter tyre tests we've featured across 2017, AutoCentrum tests the winter tyres in the dry, wet and snow, but also includes ice testing, a first for 2017.

Six of the tyres on test are European winter tyres which are available to the UK market, and two of the tyres (Debica Frigo 2 and Sava Eskimo Ice) are full nordic friction winter tyres, so it should give us a good overview of how these two different types of tyres perform, and why Nordic winter tyres aren't suitable for the UK market.

Fifty winter tyres have been put through wet braking tests, with the top thirty also tested for snow braking performance. Only the top twenty have gone through to the full Auto Bild winter tyre test!

The 2017 Auto Bild winter tyre test started with fifty 225/50 R17 winter tyre patterns which Auto Bild tested for wet braking performance, and then dropped the worse twenty tyres from the test.

The next phase was testing the remaining thirty patterns for snow braking, which was then combined with the wet braking distances to allow the ten worst tyres to be dropped. This left twenty winter tyres which Auto Bild regarded as the best winter tyres on the market, and deemed worthy enough to take through to the full testing.

As ever with Auto Bild testing, they undertake all the usual dry, wet and snow testing, but also including important factors such as wear and cost per 1,000 km, which a lot of tests are unable to include.

The results as closer than ever, and you'd be hard pressed to classify any of the top 10 tyres as bad tyres, but three in particular rose to the top.

This year the German motoring orginisation ADAC have tested winter tyres in 195/65 R15 and 215/65 R16.

The 195/65 R16 winter tyre test continues Continentals winter dominance, with another win for the Continental WinterContact TS860. 

Issue 1,495 of the weekly UK publication Auto Express contains their 2017 winter tyre test!

This year Auto Express have tested eight winter tyre patterns in 225/45 R17 using a VW Golf in the dry and wet, and an Audi A3 in the snow. 

Auto Express have previously asked us to keep our coverage of their tests to a minumum, so below is a summary of what went on. The full results can be found on the Auto Express website, which we will link as soon as they're online.

Overall, with just 3.9% covering the eight tyres on test, it's getting closer every year at the top.

The first winter tyre test of 2017 has been published! The German publication Auto Motor und Sport [AMS] have tested ten ultra high performance winter tyres in 225/40 R18. This extremely popular 18" tyre sizes is fitted to performance saloons such as the Audi A4, Skoda Octavia VRS, and the 232 bhp BMW 430i Grand Coupe used for this testing.

This year Sport Auto magazine have tested six performance winter tyres in 235/40 R18.

Due to the limited number of patterns in the test, and no all season or summer comparison, we'll forgo the usual commentry and just present the results below.

Issue 1,443 of the weekly UK publication Auto Express contains their excellent 2016 winter tyre test! This year Auto Express have tested eight winter tyre patterns in 205/55 R16 using a VW Golf, and like other publications have included an all season and summer tyre for comparison.

Each year, the German automotive publication Autobild trump all the other European magazines by putting out a huge winter tyre test, and this year is no different.

Starting out with fifty winter tyre patterns, Autobild tested all the tyres wet braking performance. Once the wet braking order was set, Autobild took the twenty seven patterns which stopped the car within 20% of the best through to snow braking, then the top twenty wet and snow braking results combined this, the full tyre test.

Using a BMW 3 Series wearing 245/40 R18 tyres, Auto Bild placed eight ultra high performance winter tyre patterns to the test.

Most magazines look to test around ten different tyre patterns each test, with some pushing up to fifteen different tyres. Auto Bild like to go a step further and this year, have tested test fifty sets of 205/55 R16 winter tyres.

Once again in 2016, the German Magazine Auto Zeitung have provided one of the most exciting winter tyre tests we've covered. Testing thirteen of the latest winter tyres in 205/55 R16, including the Continental WinterContact TS860, Dunlop Winter Sport 5, Goodyear UltraGrip 9 and Nokian WR D4, Auto Zeitung have also included the Michelin CrossClimate summer-bias all season tyre as a comparison.