Continental Premium Contact 2 Reviews - Page 3

In short, I've found better options out there. Although these are now an old tyre, I still see them being offered and even fitted to some 16 plate cars as OE fitment. I'm not sure why as I've found these to be quite noisy and impart a certain sharpness to the ride which both Hankoik Ventus Prime 3 K125 and more notably Pirelli P7 Cinturato tyres seem to round off a lot better.

For a touring tyre, the Contis are impressively reactive and require less steering lock than many others. However, the negative side is that at the limit they lose grip suddenly and there is little scope for adjustment to the line. Used as such, they make the handling untidy at best and certainly less stable than others. I think these tyres demonstrate German engineering ethos in that they are generally well rounded up to about 8 tenths but after that the shortcomings become apparent.

Tyre life seems good. They were on the car for 20000 miles in both rear and front positions. Resistance to aquaplaning is quite good as is damp and cold weather cornering. As such, these older mid-performing tyres may still make sense if they are discounted sufficiently.

I have used these tyres on a few vehicles. For present purposes, my focus is on my Djet (a light-weight mid-engined coupe of the 60s) & on the size 165/70-14. I consider them to be very good tyres & am bewildered by some of the reviews. I drive the Djet very briskly indeed on country roads &, given its "tossable" charms, much of its time is spent at an angle to its direction of travel. I judge it to have good levels of grip in the dry & very good levels of grip in the wet (longitudinally under braking & laterally). But these qualities are not its main charms. It is not the crispest responding structure available in most sizes (but possibly is in 165/70) but is notable for two related traits.
One is that it's a very "talkative" tyre which lets you know precisely what it is doing (especially useful in the wet). The second is that when its (high) adhesion levels are exceeded, its limit behaviour is benign - the transient zone is broad & response to remedial inputs is faithful (especially important in the wet).
I'd love to be able to fit Michelin PilotSports 4 or Conti SportContact 6 tyres but, regrettably, 165/70-14 is not an available size. Nor is the PremiumContact 5 available in Australia in 165/ 70-14 (or I'd fit them). In the meantime, I'm very happy with the PC2.
Not that I care, but they are not harsh riding or noisy although they are short-lived.

These came as standard on both mine and my wife's cars: a 2013 Chevy Sonic and a 2013 Chevy Trax - both H rated. First off and most importantly, these tyres didn't last as long as I'd hoped for Conti's - we got about 15k out of them before they were near enough bald on the Trax and 18K out of the ones on the Sonic. I've had budget Three-A P606's that have lasted 30K+ which was a real shame for the PremiumContacts. Secondly, there's one bit of corkscrew bend in my town that the tyres frequently lost grip on in both cars in the dry - nothing major but you would feel the back-end step out at 20+, this hasn't happened on any other tyres and remember both cars are FWD. Hitting this bend in the wet would cause the back end to slip out at anything above 15mph.
Thirdly, while noise was OK at first, it gets considerably worse the more wear you're dealing with, so much so in the Sonic that you would get out of the car after long journeys with ringing in your ears and a headache.
They feel pretty firm too and aren't great at absorbing bumps as much as other tyres we've had, so they were uncomfortable at every stage of their lives. We were, at one point, thinking that the cars were the problem; Then we swapped the tyres out (Sailun Atrezzo Elites on the Trax and Toyo Proxes CF2's on the Sonic) and they're both completely different cars, so much more comfortable to drive, much more reliable grip and so much quieter.

I'm surprised we had such bad experiences with this tyre, because Continental are usually a great brand - but think they're just not well suited to our cars.