Tyres
Four patches, each the size of a hand.
Everything the car does — steering, accelerating, and above all stopping — happens through four contact patches roughly the size of your palm. It is the only category on this site where the purchase decides whether the car stops in time, and it is the category where the measured spread between products is largest.
Two things to know before reading any tyre test
A test is run in one size. Compound and construction change between sizes, so a ranking established in 235/35 R19 is good evidence about the tyres and poor evidence about the exact number of metres your car will take. We state the tested size on every page for that reason.
The efficiency figure can be won by a bad tyre. Rolling resistance is the number that sounds responsible, and a tyre that grips less rolls more easily. In the test on the page above, the tyre that finished last overall — seven metres longer in the wet — tied for the best rolling resistance of the eight.
Sizes are specific and fitting is separate. Your size is on the driver’s door jamb and on the sidewall of the tyre you already have; Amazon has its own fitment check on its results pages, and lists installation as an add-on service rather than including it. Our tyre links go to a model search rather than a single listing, because a listing is one size and it is probably not yours.