Michelin Pilot Sport 4 SUV summer tire review, new from Michelin 2019

Tire manufacturers are chasing the growing speed of crossovers

The name Pilot Sport has long been a legend for speed riders, many sports car manufacturers choose this particular model for their cars, but the most important indicator is track days. If you look at weekend racers on any race track, most of them have Michelin tires. Amateur riders appreciate them not only for their speed characteristics, but also for their durability, in this, it seems, the French managed to find the perfect balance. Moreover, you can meet such tires both on track days and in amateur competitions.

Pilot Sport 4SUV is a funny abbreviation: on the one hand, 4 can mean the fourth generation of PS, on the other hand, 4 is used as a replacement for the word for (for), which means that the name can be perceived as the fourth generation of PS, or we can assume that the first for SUV.

Michelin claims to have developed tires for fast crossovers literally from scratch, reinforcing the sidewalls and adding a layer of aramid and nylon to the asymmetric tire, as well as using a new composition of “innovative functional polymers.” The new pattern is designed so that the inside of the tread works in the rain, and the outside in dry weather.

As a result, Michelin announced an improvement in all characteristics: in comparison with competitors, the braking distance in tests was shorter by 1.1 m than that of the nearest pursuer, and by 1.6 m on wet surfaces.

In the 1050-meter race, the Audi Q5 with 4SUV tires was almost a second faster than the nearest competitor.

All this, of course, is very subjective data – Michelin is unlikely to have access to modern developments of competitors, which means that the tests of the novelty were carried out against models that are already on the market. Nevertheless, there is progress, and this cannot be ignored.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jdEiA4-U8U

Drive the Alfa Romeo Stelvio around Lisbon

Let’s move on from dry numbers to practice: a whole set of crossovers from Volvo, Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and so on was brought to Lisbon for us, but I chose Alfa Romeo Stelvio. Not only because of the beautiful design, but also because it is not in our market, and I thought it would be more interesting to write about it. True, the joy was short-lived, my entire driving mood was killed by a diesel modification. The 2.2-liter turbodiesel produces only 180 hp: this is quite enough to accelerate the 1600-kilogram crossover to 100 km / h in 7.6 seconds, but in tire tests I would like to have a 510-horsepower version quadrifoglio…

Tags