New Michelin UHP Pilot Sport A/S 3 Fills Niche for Some ON Drivers

Michelin North America recently showed off its latest addition to the Pilot passenger tire family - the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3. Due for full release in May of this year, the all-weather, all-season tire will be produced in a wide range of 65 sizes. The Pilot Sport A/S 3 is intended to be an ideal blend of performance and practicality. According to Michelin, “This tire is ideal for someone who wants to optimize the performance of his or her vehicle and drive with confidence year-round.”

Technology is breakthrough, state of the art with this tire, incorporating Michelin’s Variable Contact Patch 2.0 technology which can roughly be translated as sticks-like-glue-in-the-dry. What’s also unique is the tire’s aggressive asymmetric tread pattern, given that the tire is an all season. This tread pattern is a take-off from the Pilot Super Sport, Michelin's Max Performance Summer tire fitted to sophisticated cars like the Ferrari. This design is said to keep the road noise to a minimum and to put more rubber on the road for superior handling and control.

The Pilot Sport A/S 3 boasts “extreme” levels of silica in the tread compound along with Variable Thickness Sipes and large circumferential grooves in order to attain fantastic wet grip and fight hydroplaning. Michelin’s sunflower oil-derived Helio Compound combines with its unique siping and biting edges in the tread grooves to master cold weather mobility.

Conceived and created in North America, the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3 will also be manufactured in North America and will be backed by the Michelin Promise Plan.

Tire Retailers in ON to be Selling Dunlop Sport 5000’s to Mazda Owners

Dunlop Tires has been known historically as one of the big UK tire manufacturers. Since 1985 there has been a shuffling of ownership and rights but at this point Dunlop Tires is an American company owned by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Goodyear sells the Dunlop brand in North America, Australia and Europe.

Recently Dunlop Tires revealed that the new 2014 Mazda 6 sedan will be riding on Dunlop SP Sport 5000 radials. The SP Sport 5000 is an ultra-high performance (UHP) all-season tire with the following features:

• Innovative, asymmetrical tread design provides a balance of wet and dry performance
• Large, stable, interconnected tread blocks enhances dry cornering, grip and stability
• Independent inner tread blocks with open shoulder grooves result in powerful water dispersion and all-season grip
• Full-width, twin-cut steel belts designed for ride uniformity and excellent footprint shape
• Exclusive, high-performance, all-season tread compound  assures enhanced grip, control, energy absorption and tread wear in a wide range of driving conditions
• Max Flange Shield helps protect rims from accidental curb damage
• Jointless Band Technology™ maintains the tire's shape and enables smooth performance at highway speeds

The 2014 Mazda 6 sedan is slated to hit the market early in 2013 and will roll out on size P225/45R19.

Upstart Brand Toyo Tires Making Inroads in ON

Many drivers in our province are not very familiar with the brand Toyo Tires but this tire company has built a solid reputation in Canada and around the world. 

If you happen to live in the Toronto GTA area, which includes Oshawa, Whitby, Pickering and Ajax, you are much more likely to have run across the brand at some point or another simply because of the increased number of vehicles fitted with the Toyo brand.

Toyo has been making inroads for many years in the Canadian market and is probably best known for its Open Country tire for Off Road enthusiasts. Actually, Toyo has had an official presence in Canada for nearly 30 years but the majority of its operations are in the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania, having started business over 65 years ago.

In North America, tire dealers have voted Toyo Tires as the number one overall brand on several occasions. (I recently blogged about the 2012 Tire Brand Study.) According to Toyo themselves, “our consumer tires have been voted #1 Overall Brand by North American tire dealers an unprecedented seven times since 2000.”

Very recently, Toyo Tire U.S.A. announced its all-season A24 had been selected as OE (original equipment) tire on the fully redesigned 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport crossover. Becoming OE supplier for new vehicles is a great way to get established in the marketplace and because this is the first OE Mitsubishi fitment in the U.S. and Canada for Toyo, it means more penetration and a brighter future.

Mitsubishi’s most popular model is the Outlander Sport and all trim levels of the 2013 Outlander Sport come standard with all season Toyo A24 tires, size P225/55R18, on 18-inch aluminum wheels. Apparently the great fuel economy of the Outlander (31 mpg) is due partly to the hi tech design of the A24 tire, even though it boasts a 148-hp, 2.0-liter MIVEC engine.

The most popular consumer product lines for the Toyo brand are Proxes (for high performance passenger cars, light trucks and race cars), Open Country (for light trucks and SUVs), Versado (for luxury passenger cars), and Extensa (high value tire for passenger cars and minivans). Many of the tires are built in the United States at their state-of-the-art factory in Bartow County, Georgia.

Tire Dealers in ON to Offer New Yokohama iG51v Winter Tire

Yokohama Tire Corporation has added a new fierce looking model to its winter lineup. Dubbed the Iceguard iG51v, this is a snow and ice tire that breaks some boundaries when it comes to tread block design. Yokohama says that they have incorporated a high density reinforced compound that keeps the tire tread stable under all winter weather conditions, thereby assuring maximum, consistent contact with the road. One glance at the tire reveals an unusual zig zag design which is part of a strategy to stabilize the tire in slush and snow by creating a dual-action shoulder groove.

Remember to buy this tire from Notre Dame Tire when it becomes available.

Looking to Buy the Latest Kumho Tires in Oshawa, ON?

Kumho Tire Co. Inc. has announced the launch of its brand new all season touring tire, named the Kumho Sense KR26, which is set to debut in the first quarter of 2013.

The KR26 is an H-rated tire and is designed for replacement use on smaller and lighter vehicles such as the Honda Civic and Mazda 3. Trying to capitalize on fuel savings through lighter weight, the Sense KR26 is a good fit for smaller sedans built to meet EPA regulations. Less weight means less mass to move around and typically this also means less rolling resistance, translating into better fuel mileage.

Looks like the KR26 may be a popular tire in our province of NL due to its energy efficiencies and due to the fact that we've got more than our share of smaller vehicles, particularly in the larger centres such as St. John's, Mount Pearl, Gander, Grand Falls and Corner Brook. Watch for the arrival of this tire in the spring. Stay tuned.

The tire will be manufactured in 28 different sizes from 13” diameter to 17” diameters with a UTQG rating of 520 AA and a 40,000-mile limited treadwear warranty will be offered..

Being an all season tire, the Sense KR26 takes on wet challenges by means of its circumferential grooves for lateral grip and water evacuation. In addition it has been designed with multiple lateral grooves for both wet and dry traction.  Improved traction in light snow is achieved through a full depth sipe system. The KR26 minimizes road noise by utilizing variable pitch tread blocks.

Where Can I Buy Tires in Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax & Pickering?

Well, that should be obvious. The clear choice is Notre Dame Tire.

Now that we've got that out of the way, here’s another question: Do Canadian Drivers Underestimate the Value of Winter Tires?

To discover the answer, let’s refer to a recent study undertaken by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Canada which has found that Canadian drivers aren't yet clued into the benefits of winter tires.

The report is entitled “Winter Tires: A Review of Research on Effectiveness and Use” and examined efficiencies of winter tires and their potential effects. Included in the study was an examination of Canadians’ views and perceptions on the use of winter tires.

Surprisingly, a great many Canadian motorists who do not make the seasonal change over to winter tires admitted that the extra costs involved play a major role in their yearly decision to refrain from using winter tires. Other more scarier attitudes also surfaced in this study.

But the bottom line is that winter tires need to play a consistent role in the safe winter driving habits of all NL motorists.

Download a copy of the report, Winter Tires: A Review of Research on Effectiveness and Use via http://bit.ly/PX7nqs.

The CBC Talks Winter Tires

Recently, on CBC Radio on November 28, 2012, they covered the subject of winter tire use in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Apparently it's not all that simple to determine how many NL drivers actually change over from regular to winter tires when cold weather sets in.

Have a listen. Transcript of talk follows.

Background noise: Sound of tires spinning in the snow.

Anthony: OK there are two sounds that put fear in people’s minds and one is a dental drill; the other is the sound of tires spinning because you know that means you’ve got to get behind your vehicle and push. Well the snow that we woke up to yesterday morning had many of us talking about winter tires and just how many of us there are…it’s that typical scenario when people say: “oh, I meant to do this last week. Now Cec had some data in a press release from the Rubber Association of Canada and that release said 46% of drivers in this province use winter tires and not long after we started talking about it we received some information that the province had its own numbers that tell a somewhat different story and Cec joins me once again. Hi there…

Cec: Yeah it’s a completely different story from the provincial government as far as winter tire usage goes…ah…the province says it’s much greater than one-half. We received an email, Anthony, from Government Services that says in 2009 that Department got the province’s statistics agency to conduct a survey on winter tire usage. And this survey showed that about 85% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are using winter tires on at least one of their vehicles. And that number is higher in the St. John’s area with over 92% of drivers installing winter tires on at least one of the vehicles in the household. And the survey also showed that where a person is over 65, winter tire usage was about 85%. Now the thing that I’d like to stress when I read these numbers is that they say that it’s on at least one of the vehicles that they own. Where you have more than one the numbers are a bit different.

Anthony: I guess though that still there’s a difference between the province’s numbers and this Rubber Association. What accounts for the difference?

Cec: Well we’re not sure yet and we’re trying to find out. The Rubber Association says nationally 52% of Canadians drive with winters on. In this province it’s about 46%. But that’s not according to government officials here.

Anthony: But what is this Rubber Association?

Cec: The press release that we got the other day says that it is an association that represents tire makers. That’s all it says. And it also says that a study was done in Quebec about three years after Quebec made winter tires mandatory and that that research shows that winter accidents dropped by about 5% resulting in 575 fewer injuries and also too I’d like to point out, Anthony, that the provincial government’s information says that Aviva Canada Insurance is saying that Newfoundland and Labrador filed fewer insurance claims because of winter driving accidents than anywhere else in the country, And they attribute the low number to people here properly equipping their vehicles. As well as planning their days better when driving in harsh conditions. And we did get an email last night just before I went to bed. I got something from the Rubber Association saying that they’re going to contact this government department here, Government Services Newfoundland, and they’re going to compare notes and try to clarify the Association’s position in terms of how they arrived at their numbers. So the Rubber Tire Association is looking into it and I guess that’s the question for us this morning. I mean is it? Do half of us use winter tires or is it much higher than that? And hopefully we’ll get some feedback from our listeners on it.

Anthony: Yeah, and later in the show you’ll be talking to a guy who makes his living and his livelihood off of changing and selling tires.

Cec: Yes, I’ll be popping down to King’s Bridge service Station in St. John’s at the bottom of Kenna’s hill there. We’ll do that after the National News at 8:30.

Anthony: All right Cec. Talk to you then…and before that as well. Now as you heard Cec mention, we’d like to hear what you think. 576-5259. I don’t know…a survey that says 85% of people in this province are using winter tires on at least one of their vehicles. It sounds kind of high to me but I haven’t done the polling I don’t know…ah…your thoughts. 576-5759. We’ll try to get to the bottom of why there’s this discrepancy on winter tire usage in Newfoundland and Labrador.