Tire Types
Proper tyres are something each car owner should definitely take care of before driving off the garage.
There are several tyre types you should always keep in mind. Your choice might depend on your manner of car maintainance, place of living, your drive style and a variety of other factors. Here are the classifications with examples and images.
Performance/Summer Tires
Performance/summer tyres are made especially for power fast and furious cars and for folks who prefer to drive harder than the average driver. Such tyres normally put performance and grip ahead of longevity by using a softer rubber compound. Tread block design is typically biased towards outright grip rather than the ability to pump water out of the way on a wet road. The extreme example of performance tyres are “slicks” used in motor racing, so-called because they have no tread at all.
All-Round/All-Season Tires
All-rounds are what you’ll obvously find on every production car that comes out of a car plant. They’re made to be a compromise between grip, performance, longevity, noise and wet-weather safety. For increased tyre life, they are designed with a harder rubber compound, which sacrifices outright grip and cornering performance. For 90% of the world’s car owners, this isn’t an issue. The tread block design is normally a compromise between quiet running and water dispersion – an all-season tyre should not be too noisy in normal use but should work fairly well in downpours and on wet roads. These tyres are neither excellent dry-weather, nor excellent wet-weather tyres, but are, a compromise as we mentionned above.
Wet-Weather Tires
Wet-weather tires actually use a softer compound than performance tires, rather than use a harder compound of all-arounds. Depending on conditions, the rubber needs to heat up quicker in cold or wet conditions and needs to have as much mechanical grip as possible. Such tires will typically also have a lot more siping to try to disperse water from the contact patch.
Some specialists also distinguish aquachannel tires that are a subset of winter or wet-weather tyres.
Snow & mud or ice: special winter tyres
Winter tires are at the other end of the classification to performance tires. They’re apt to work well in wintery conditions with snow and ice on the roads. Snow & mud or ice tyres have larger, and thus noiser tread block patterns. In extreme climates, true snow tyres have tiny metal studs fabricated into the tread for biting into the snow and ice. The downside of this is that they are incredibly noisy on dry roads and wear out both the tyre and the road surface extremely quickly if driven in the dry. Mud & snow tyres typically either have ‘M&S’ stamped on the tyre sidewall. Snow & Ice tyres have a snowflake symbol.
All-Terrain Tires
All-terrain tyres are normally used on sport utility vehiclesand light trucks. They are larger tyres with stiffer sidewalls and bigger tread block patterns. The larger tread block means the tyres are very noisy on normal roads but grip loose sand and dirt very well when you take the car or truck off-road. As well as the noise, the larger tread block pattern means less tyre surface in contact with the road. The rubber compound used in these tyres is normally middle-of-the-road – neither soft nor hard.
Mud Tires
At the extreme end of the all-terrain tyre classification are mud tires. These have massive, super-chunky tread blocks and really shouldn’t ever be driven anywhere other than loose mud and dirt. The tread sometimes doesn’t even come in blocks any more but looks more like paddles built in to the tyre carcass.
Decide upon what suits your requirements the most and be careful on the road!
