Continental looks forward to summer tyre test results

The major automotive trade magazines and automobile clubs across Europe are publishing the results of their comprehensive summer tyre tests over the next few weeks. Continental products have regularly occupied places at the very top of the rankings for many years.

Auto Zeitung was first out of the blocks and assessed the ContiSportContact 5 as “highly recommended.” The editorial team reserved particular praise for its excellent balance.

Continental says it is not especially difficult to give extraordinary capabilities to a tyre with certain properties. Yet state-of-the-art, high-performance products must show themselves off at their best not in just one but in a diverse range of driving situations.

In addition to short braking distances on all road surfaces, special requirements include aquaplaning protection, precise steering responses, high cornering forces, high traction, and predictable handling characteristics.

Two trends have emerged in recent years in particular. On the one hand,  tyres  for compact vehicles with their increasingly powerful engines require approval for ever greater speeds.

On the other hand, car drivers are paying more and more attention to cost-effective tyre solutions with low rolling resistance. These are requirements that are incorporated into the performance specifications of new products across all tyre segments at the Continental, as the product development focus of the Continental premium tyre brand has always been on optimising all safety-relevant characteristics, while simultaneously minimising rolling resistance.

Accordingly, this is also reflected in the current product range.

The ContiEcoContact 5 – the current model for compact and lower medium-sized class vehicles – offers the ideal combination of short braking distances on wet and dry roads with low rolling resistance. This meant a complete re-development of the carcass, compound, tyre contour, and tread design. The sum total of the innovative developments ultimately facilitated a drastic reduction in rolling resistance of 20% for significantly lower fuel consumption with greater braking safety and shortened braking distances on wet and dry roads. At the same time, mileage was increased by 12%. This means a vehicle fitted with the ContiEcoContact 5 tire uses about 3% less fuel than the same car with standard tires. The tyre has also been approved for speeds of up to 300 km/h, and thus meets the demand for increasingly higher speeds in the smaller vehicle segment in an ideal manner.