Why Buy Premium Tyres instead of Budget Tyres?

The argument over whether the price differential between quality and budget tyre brands is worth paying to achieve the higher quality standards, that are experienced with popular brands such as Continental, Bridgestone and Pirelli, is becoming increasingly important due to the volatile nature of global economies, which constantly affects the purchasing decisions of customers in the current economic climate.

At a 'Brand Experience' day, held in September 2011 Continental allowed independent drivers to find out for themselves the true difference between premium and budget tyres by allowing them to test the tyres wet handling and braking characteristics in two otherwise identical cars. The results were startling. The premium tyres performed to a significantly higher standard in both wet handling and braking tests compared to the budget tyres.

Independent tests carried out by different organisations also suggest similar trends over the various areas of tyre performance. For example, Autocar in 2008 carried out an independent test that aimed exclusively to find out the performance differentials between premium and budget tyres. Obviously, they expected the more popular premium brands to deliver higher standards of quality than the cheaper options, but the distance between them was much greater than was expected. The tyres were analysed over 7 different performance categories including: Dry Handling, Wet Handling, Dry Braking, Wet Braking, Aquaplaning (Lo), Aquaplaning (Lateral) and Wet Circle. The products were given marks up to 6 for the best possible performance and 1 for the worst. Continental was the premium tyre utilized in this test and it averaged 5.9 over the 7 performance criteria, whereas the best budget tyre had a mean of just 3.9. Furthermore, the tyre that performed the worst in the test averaged a mere 1.9.

The test seemed to establish that while the premium tyres, in this case Continental, seem to be consistent in all performance criteria, the cheap tyre options in the same field usually only have the capability to deliver a satisfying performance in one two areas which is usually at the expense of quality standards in other disciplines. However, this isn't a new phenomenon for tyre engineers, as good performances in one discipline can always have the ability to adversely affect its capability in another area, meaning that they are always striving to find the right balance of components in the tyre in order to emphasise certain performance characteristics to meet the specific requirements of their target consumers.

In addition to this an Auto Express Tyre test managed to find out that similar trends were occurring with the wet handling and braking characteristics of budget tyres compared to their more expensive counterparts. Once again, this clearly demonstrates that by paying for the cheaper option you are always settling for lower quality, thereby demonstrating that you really do get what you pay for.

Overall, budget and premium tyres are essentially the same product, but what sets the two apart are the substances that are used to manufacture each one with premium tyres using higher quality components and newer technology to deliver optimised products. This investment in R & D and quality materials helps to maintain the high performance of premium tyres in all independent tests.