Kindly all tyre experts comment over here.
What Car? has named and shamed budget brands in a test warning that tyres like these ?could kill.? In the test published online on 4 August 2010 What Car? measured the performance of the Arrowspeed CP661, Continental Premium Contact 2, Goodyear Optigrip, Michelin Pilot Sport 3, Ovation VI-182 and Sunew YS112 in dry braking, wet braking, lateral grip and noise tests. The Michelin Pilot Sport 3 came out top, with particularly strong results in wet and dry braking. However, there were some shocking outcomes in the budget sector when it came to braking and noise.
The budget tyres from Ovation and Sunew had a particularly bad time in the wet braking test. Here GPS-based timing technology was used to measure how long it took each tyre to stop the Vauxhall Meriva test car from 70mph. All three budget tyres came out as clear losers in this category with the Sunew YS112 taking 82.4 metres to come to a standstill ? a whopping 22.9 metres longer than the Michelin Pilot Sport 3. While better, the Ovation and Arrowspeed?s 76 and 68.2 metre respective stopping distances were a world apart from the top three, the longest of which was the Continental Premium Contact 2 with 64.3 metres.
Wet Braking
Source: What Car?
When it came to dry braking the budget tyres faired a lot better with the Sunew YS112 outperforming the Goodyear Optigrip by 1.2 metres with a stopping distance of 52.2 metres. The Ovation VI-182 equalled Goodyear?s result, but the Arrowspeed was half a metre behind this and came bottom with a 53.9 metre dry braking distance. Michelin again topped this table, taking 48.5 metres to come to halt, with the Continental tyre taking second place with 51.1 metres.
Dry Braking
Source: What Car?
After the shock of the 22.9 metre gulf in wet stopping distances, the second shock of the day came in the noise category. This time the budget tyres were among the best tested with the Sunew coming out on top with 69 decibels of noise at 70mph, followed by Continental and Arrowspeed with 70dB. Michelin got 71dB followed by Ovation and Goodyear with 72 and 73dB Respectively. Four decibels difference between the Sunew and the Goodyear tyres may not appear to be much difference, but actually ? due to the fact that decibels are a logarithmic calculation ? 4 decibels difference is roughly one and a half times louder. With this in mind it is unlikely that the Sunews will have any trouble getting an s-mark. Meeting the future 2012 labelling requirements, which measure wet braking and rolling resistance as well, may be a different story.
Noise Test Results in Decibels
Source: What Car?
In conclusion and faced with the question of whether to buy cheap and quiet or more pricey but safer rubber, What Car? gave this advice: ?Tyres are the only part of your car that are in contact with the road. So, rather than cutting corners with budget tyres, we?d recommend shopping around for the best prices on a decent set.?
<span style="text-align:right"><span class="bbcode-i"> <span class="bbcode-b">admin</span> posted on 01/09/2010 11:22:12 </span></span>
Just received this fascinating reply from Raif Firebrush, representing Ovation manufacturer Shandong Changfeng Tyres Ltd. Please feel free to leave your comments using the links below.
Attn: The Editor
Tyres and Accessories Magazine
We are writing in connection with your recent online article in which you offered your comments on what we consider to have been a wholly unbalanced and misleading What Car? test, that concluded that budget tyres 'could kill'. We believe that this conclusion by What Car? is both irresponsible and unfair in the extreme, and it smacks of cheap and sensationalist journalism.
Ovation brand tyres, which were one of the budget brand tyres in the test, are certainly not dangerous in any way. The facts are that these tyres are good quality tyres manufactured in a new, state of the art factory that boasts the most modern machinery and an impressive in house research and development capability. It should be said that several of the highly trained engineers and technicians who have contributed to the design and development of Ovation brand, and who oversee the manufacture and quality quantrol of the tyres, have previously worked in senior technical and engineering positions in so called 'premium' brand production facilities.
All Ovation brand tyres destined for the European market are manufactured to strict European quality standards, are E mark endurance tested, have s noise and wet grip approval and are REACH compliant. The tyres therefore conform to every regulation laid down by the authorites.
The tests that What car? conducted and that purport to show that Ovation brand (and by clear inference all other 'budget' tyres) is somehow dangerous is totally nonsensical and in fact there is no analytical basis for this conclusion. Looking at the data in the What Car? report, it can be seen that in the dry braking test Ovation matched Goodyear, with a 53.4 metres stopping distance, came within a little over 2 metres of the Continental tyre and beat Arrowspeed. Ovation also outperformed Goodyear in the noise test and was just one decibel adrift of Michelin. There was a difference in wet braking distances, but this is measured against best in class (Michelin) in the premium sector. It would surely be astonishing if a budget tyre outperformed or matched a premium brand tyre in every test category. However, far from showing Ovation to be an inferior tyre, it is our contention that Ovation performed creditably in the What Car? tests and would certainly have satisfied and probably exceeded every performance criteria laid down in the various European regulations.
When any test in almost any product area is conducted between the most expensive/most expensively engineered product, and a less expensive product, it can normally and quite reasonably be expected that there will at least be some correlation between price and performance. Would one really expect, for example, a well engineered and regulation compliant Vauxhall saloon to outperform an Aston Martin on every measure? The answer is that you wouldn't expect that, so why would you expect a tyre costing so much less than a Michelin or Goodyear brand tyre to match or beat the premium brands in all areas of performance? Having said that, what the tests actually show is a true mixed bag, with Ovation brand performing well in some categories and not so well in others, and exactly the same can be said for Michelin, Goodyear and Continental. Any sensible consumer looking at these test results could reasonably conclude that paying more does not necessarily buy you a better tyre, because as the tests show only too clearly every brand in the test had its particular strengths and its weaknesses. We should also point out that the Ovation tyre that was used in the test has now been superseded by a new tread pattern, and had this tyre been selected for the test then it is more than likely that Ovation would have outperformed one or more of the premium brand tyres in even more categories.
It was therefore a misleading premise for What Car? to adopt and they should be encouraged to show a more appropriate and balanced reporting method in future articles of this nature, or they will very quickly lose any reputation they may have for serious or impartial reporting.
Source: <a href='http://www.tyrepress.com/News/1/22/20196.html'>Report: Budget Tyres Could Kill, But at Least They?re Quiet</a>
