Summer VS Winter tyres - Warm weather performance

There's no arguing that winter tyres offer more grip than summer in temperatures below 5-7c, and that below 0c that performance gap is even wider, but how do winter tyres perform when the sun is out and the temperature is high?

To answer this we've used the 2010 Auto Bild All Season tyre test which was conducted during the summer months. Primarily an all season tyre test, Auto Bild were kind enough to include a summer and winter tyre for comparative purposes.

The results

Unsurprisingly the summer tyres won the dry and wet tests, but the winter tyre averaged just over 10% behind it's summer counter part which is closer than expected. During the snow test, the summer tyre had less than 50% of the grip.

The all season tyre had similar properties to the winter tyre, offering a little more grip in the dry and wet, and a little less grip in the snow. This just goes to prove the naming terms the tyre industry use are too generalised, as we're quite confident another brand of ??all season tyre?? would mirror the summer tyres performance.

Our advice? If you commute during the winter and rely on your car to get to work, winter tyres will give superior grip on cold mornings without sacrificing more than 10% of summer tyre performance during the odd freak warm day.

The summer tyres were the Bridgestone ER300, the all season tyres the Vredestein Quatrac 3 and the winter tyres the Dunlop Winter Sport 3D

Your thoughts and comments are welcome below.

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