Results Of A Tire Test Carried Out By The British Magazine 'Autocar' Reveal: 'Staggering' Differences Between Quality And Budget Tires

HANOVER, Germany - February 12, 2009: The British magazine ‘Autocar’ has highlighted the ‘staggering’ difference in quality between tires made in Europe and budget Asian imports.

In the current issue, experts tested five summer tires, using the ContiPremiumContact 2 as their reference tire. Tests revealed that the imports encountered safety problems, mainly in wet driving conditions, but were also outperformed by a European tire in terms of braking distance on dry asphalt. High-speed tests showed yet more problems, with four out of five of the import tires failing to make the grade at top speeds.

The British magazine’s test team compared five budget tires made by Asian manufacturers GT Radial, Nankang, Wanli, Linglong and Triangle with the ContiPremiumContact 2, Continental’s tire for compact family cars and medium sized vehicles. Huge safety risks were discovered: on wet surfaces at 50 km/h, braking distances differed by up to 8.5 metres; cornering stability on wet roads showed equally wide differences in safety levels. The test car lapped the wet test track about ten per cent more quickly on Continental tires than on the poorest-performing imports, and handling was clearly better. The imports showed a lack of grip, particularly when quick steering adjustment was required when cornering. In laps driven on the wet circuit, the ultimate test of cornering grip, the worst of the imported tires’ performance was 28 per cent poorer than that of the European tires.

The budget tires also showed their weak points on dry asphalt: at 100 km/h, the braking distance of the cheaper tires was up to 5.5 metres longer than that of their European competitor. “Equipped with Linglong tires, the test car was still doing 20 miles an hour (around 34 km/h) at the point where it had stopped on the Continentals,” commented one of the test team.

Not only did the Asian imports fare badly in handling tests, they clearly underperformed in high-speed tests too, with four of them failing the test under VW’s stringent requirements.

Autocar’s test results mirror those of numerous other magazines, which have been pointing out the safety downsides of cheap Asian tires over the last year. In October 2008, DEKRA performed a similar comparison using the Contidrom which exposed the shockingly poor wet braking and wet handling characteristics of imported Asian budget winter tires. Differences in wet surface braking distances between the ContiWinterContact TS 830 and the ‘Federal WS1’ were around 50 per cent, with similarly stark safety issues revealed in wet handling conditions.