Wheels’ recent Tyre Test put nine standard fitment style SUV tyres through the wringer to find the best brand and pattern on sale.

Each tyre from a range of brands including Goodyear, Bridgestone, Dunlop, Pirelli, Kumho and Continental was subjected to a rigorous test regime at the Ian Luff Driver Training Academy in Sydney’s Eastern Creek, designed to push every element of tyre performance to the limit.

Kia Sportage Slalom
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Racing driver and automotive engineer Renato Loberto subjected each brand to a dry slalom test designed to measure cornering grip, emergency braking tests on both dry and wet surfaces and, finally, a timed circuit hot-lap devised to put each tyre’s cornering, accelerating and braking ability under pressure.

Keeping the wheels turning were Jax Tyres – with equipment and expertise from Eagle SMF – who converted a Sydney Dragway scrutineering shed into an efficient tyre fitting operation that looked just like one of their 80-odd East Coast (and Tassie) retail stores.

Kia Sportage tyre test wet braking
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The Kia Sportage test mule was in and out with a fresh set of tyres in much less than a minute, and it did a total of 50 circuit laps and slalom runs and more than 100 brake tests without complaint. At the end of the testing, it was as good as new.

Wheels used a Racelogic Performance Box to gather data on lateral and longitudinal acceleration – cornering and braking force – and recorded slalom and lap times, tyre and circuit temperatures, and tyre noise. All the vital information needed, in other words, to arrive at a winner.

SUV tyre test
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And, in a dominant display, and a near clean-sweep of the results, that tyre was … the Continental Premium Contact 5. A well-deserved victor, it offered about 10 percent more handling and braking ability than the average car tyre, and could stop as much as a metre shorter in the wet.

Each brand was tested in 225/60R17, a standard size on SUVs such as the Kia Sportage, Hyundai Tucson, Jeep Cherokee, Renault Koleos and Subaru Forester, though the winning Continental is also available in a range of sizes to suit the majority of small and medium SUVs.

You can read the full 2016 Wheels Tyre Test at WheelsMag.com.au or in the October issue of Wheels.