If you're a regular reader, you'll know we get to test a great many tires each year. Truth be told, we arrive full of optimism, only to leave with our hopes dashed. The problem is, many tire companies don't really want you to test their tires too hard. It's not unusual to spend less than three minutes behind the wheel of a car before the manufacturer's representative asks for your opinions and ushers you off to a different task.
Fortunately, the people at Continental Tires aren't afraid to have you beat on their product. They understand a) we want to drive their tires hard, b) we want to have fun doing so and c) we need a few miles under our belts to actually form a proper opinion. With that in mind, they rented California Speedway for a day and organized a number of exercises for our education (and entertainment! - it's a tough job, etc).
The purpose of the day was to introduce the brand new Continental ExtremeContact range. First introduced at SEMA 2008 (et 2/09), the family includes winter, all-season and summer variants. What makes the Extreme range unique is it's the first time the German brand has produced tires exclusively for the North American market. In fact, they won't have any European "E" markings on the sidewall, displaying only DOT markings instead.
There are several ideas behind this. Most appealing is that it's allowed the company to produce something that suits US driving, where sustained 130mph+ autobahn cruising in the rain is a rare occurrence. It's also allowed them to produce a tire that isn't constrained by OE requirements, as many of its products are. And while OE contracts are a great asset, each manufacturer has a very specific set of criteria in terms of wear, noise, wet handling, etc. So the new Extreme tires can be built to suit a wider American audience.
We previously had the chance to sample the new ExtremeWinterContact earlier this year. You can read our brief report on the blog pages at www.eurotuner.com or wait for the full appraisal in the 11/09 issue, when drivers in the Northern states should be considering winter tires.
So the Cal Speedway event was our opportunity to experience the ExtremeContact DW and DWS tires. The latter is an all-season, with the initials standing for Dry, Wet and Snow, while the DW is more of a "summer" tire.
One cool aspect of both these tires is the aforementioned initials are stamped into the tread blocks to serve as a tread wear indicator. As the "W" disappears from view, it means the tread depth is insufficient for safe use in wet conditions. Obviously, the "D" is the last letter to disappear since you don't need as much tread depth for dry conditions, but it serves as a convenient way to check tire wear.
New technology on the Extreme range includes Chamfered Edges that give you another contact area when cornering. By chamfering the tread blocks, you get an extra section of rubber as the blocks are pushed through a turn. The asymmetrical tread design also gives you a solid outer shoulder, with the broad rubber tread contributing to improved dry performance. Yet there are also wide grooves in the tire to help evacuate water for wet handling. Add in Dynamic Temperature Distribution during construction to reduces distortion for lower rolling resistance and improved tread-life, and you have an impressive spec list. (The DWS tires also get special traction grooves and increased pattern edges to help with snow-covered roads.
A wide range of sizes will be available from the tires' launch, right up to 21" for the DW and 24" for the DWS to suit SUV applications.
To highlight the strengths of the Extreme range, Conti's tests included high-speed laps around the two-mile Speedway oval on its DW tires. Using track-prepared Toyota Celicas, we could easily maintain speeds in excess of 110mph on the high banking. This was designed to highlight the high-speed stability of the tires, which never felt as if they were under duress.