With autumn coming to the end and with the cold weather approaching, now is  theperfect time to get your vehicle winter ready. Demand for winter tyres really spiked during the 2010/11 cold snaps, thanks to a heavy snow and below freezing temperatures. But now, 5 years later, after couple of really mild winters, benefits of winter tyres are almost forgotten. Both, consumer and manufacturer are now focused on all-season tyres.

All-season tyres offers vastly improved grip compared to summer tyres when the temperatures are freezing and/or road surface are covered with ice or snow. All-season tyres are less extreme than winter tyres, there for using them on wet surfaces comes with less penalties and particularly dry braking, where winter tyres could give up to 15-20% of summer tyres braking performance.

Earlier this year Michelin launched their CrossClimate all-season tyre and introduced new meaning to all-season tyre. There are now two types of them, winter based and summer based all-season tyres.

CrossClimate is the only summer based all-weather tyre in the market today and it looks like it is the best tyre for Irish drivers. Although, these tyres might give up a bit of performance on snow driving when compared to best winter tyres in the world, but it certainly leaves every standard summer tyre far behind for all around performance, including wet and dry braking. Let’s not forget improved fuel efficiency and reduced road noise as well.

If you are living in rural parts of Ireland and driving on snow or icy surfaces is common for you, winter based all-season tyres are something to consider. Goodyear is currently market leader for producing best winter based all-weather tyres in Europe.  Goddyear’s Vector 4 Seasons tyre offers flawless performance, offering excellent dry and wet handling as well as perfect mix between dry and snow and icy performance.

Winners of 2016 tests are:

2016 ADAC all season tyre test winner: Michelin CrossClimate

2016 AutoBild all season tyre test winner: Michelin CrossClimate

2016 ACE all season tyre test winner: Nokian WeatherProof

2016 GF all season tyre test winner: Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons Gen2

2016 AutoBild Winter UHP (ultra high performance) tyre test winner: Goodyear UltraGrip Performance Gen1

2016 ADAC Winter tyre test winner: Goodyear UltraGrip 9