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.
-
Types
The all-season won nothing.
One car, three tyre types, three surfaces. Summer won dry and wet, winter won snow — and the all-season came last in the rain, behind the winter tyre.
0 of 3 surfaces
-
Performance summer
Seven metres, in the wet, between best and worst.
Eight tyres, one size, one car. At the point the best has stopped from 80 km/h, the worst is still doing 38 — and the tyre that finished last is joint best on rolling resistance.
24.54 m – 31.48 m wet
-
Wear
1.6 mm is where it becomes illegal, not where it becomes bad.
A report written for the European Commission puts the stopping-distance increase at 30 to 65 per cent at the 1.6 mm limit, and says the curve turns below 3.5 mm.
turns below 3.5 mm
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. The tyre that finished last overall in the performance summer test — 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. We do not link tyres at all: a listing is one size and it is probably not yours, and a search page would recommend whatever the retailer ranks first rather than anything a test measured.