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View Full Version : The Ultimate All-Seasons: Michelin Premier A/S



az3579
04-25-2014, 08:54 PM
Note: Before reading this, understand that this is not copied and pasted from some brochure or ad. This is all me, writing about my experiences here today.


Michelin has always been known as one of the best tire manufacturers due to their constant innovation in tire technology. When you hear "Michelin", you know you're hearing about a quality tire, and today's tires by them are no different.

Today, I was one of the lucky ones to attend a special event that Michelin has hosted. The purpose of this event was to demonstrate the ability of the Michelin Premier A/S (all season) line of tires' ability to perform both when new and when worn close to the end of its service life. They tout the Premier's ability to maintain its performance characteristics as the tire wears, giving the driver a sense of confidence and more importantly, safety. Safety is the main theme behind this tire, as a tire that performs optimally is one that is the safest.

The Michelin Premier A/S is an all-season tire that introduces some of Michelin's newest tire technologies to the line that is set to replace the Michelin Primacy. At this event, we spoke about the different new technologies that make this tire better than the one it replaces. I won't bore you with the details of these technologies, but I do have a brief synopsis of these technologies at the bottom of this post.

Todays events comprised of two tests, both aimed at demonstrating the ability of the Premier A/S tire compared to some of its competitors, both low-priced and priced on-par with the Michelin. The purpose is to demonstrate the difference between buying a budget tire and a tire of higher quality, so this test both demonstrated the different price brackets as well as the closest competitors’ performance to the Michelins.

The first exercise was set up in the form of a light autocross course. It was a decently lengthy course, but not one that you needed to memorize, as the “best times” was not the point of the exercise. It consisted of a slalom in the beginning, followed by a tight turn, a decent length straight, and a series of tight turns, many of which were switchbacks that brought out a tire’s limits. The test cars were all Cadillac CTS’ throughout all tests carried out today, all of which are pretty much brand new (ranging from 10ish miles to only a few hundred miles on the odometer). We would have a few Cadillac CTS’ with the various competitor tires mounted on them as well as one with the Michelin Premier A/S mounted, and we would run through the course with a car and then hop into the next one when done and run the course back-to-back with the competitors’ and Michelin’s tires. We did this exercise at two different points in the day, both of which had different “Tiers” of tires (low end in one tier and high-end in the other). Note this course was always kept wet, and traction control was turned off while stability control was left on.

The first time around we tested the low-tier tires versus the Michelin. The tires in this group consisted of tires from Goodyear, Cooper, and the Michelin Premier A/S. The first car I drove was the car equipped with the Goodyear tires. On the course, I really felt the weight of the car push the tires beyond their limits rather quickly. They weren’t all that responsive to me personally, and found their limits very quickly when pushing through corners. There was a fair bit of understeer through most of the corners, and had to really be careful modulating the throttle in order to not overdrive the tires. They were a little vague to me and as a result I wasn’t able to properly judge just how much to throw at them before they gave up. I did not feel stability control kick in during this run.

The second run was in the Michelin equipped car. Right away I felt a more planted feel and felt that they provided much better feedback. Turn in felt nice, and they did not approach the limit nearly as quickly as the Goodyears did. Throughout the turns I felt like if I had requested a little more from them, they would have delivered. They actually did deliver when I tried to overdrive them a little towards the end of the course, and they gave a little bit more before they started to understeer. Mind you, every Michelin equipped car throughout the day had the Premier A/S tires that were worn down to 5/32 tread depth or below. Every single competitor tire that was run on the other CTS cars were BRAND NEW “out of the box” with full tread depth. Considering the fact that this tire was pretty worn, it outperformed the Goodyear by far. As a result of the excellent performance of these tires, stability control did not engage.

The final car for that exercise in the low-tier tire group was made by Cooper. Throwing the CTS around the first few corners, it became evident that the Cooper tires were a very different animal. They had excellent initial turn in, but one you were past the turn in point, things went south very very quickly. Almost immediately after turn in, the tires went straight to understeer. They had almost no extra grip to give other than the initial bite. As a result, the CTS I drove was pretty much all over the place despite my best efforts to drive this car as though I was actually competing in autox, and I struggled to find its happy point where it wasn’t too lary. Steering the car with the throttle didn’t seem to help much because I’d have to dial the throttle back so much for the tires to regain any kind of grip that it became pointless. I even plowed a few of the ending cones because the understeer was so atrocious that my wheels were pointed entirely the wrong way as I crossed the finish line. Stability control kicked in a couple of spots, the first one not that noticeable, but in the second instance kicked in HARD; I heard a very loud knock and a whole bunch of nothing happening with the power for a second or so while the car tried to get itself back in order.

Later in the day, we tested the higher-tier tires, ones that are more direct competitors to the Michelin Premier A/S. In this case, you can see that paying more for your tires almost always yields you better results. In this batch, we ran the same course (wet of course) only with tires from Bridgestone, Michelin, and quite frankly I forgot the third one.

The Bridgestone Turanza Serenity Plus tires were actually quite nice to drive on. They had good feedback, higher grip than the previous non-Michelins I drove, and it was quite easy to control them with the throttle. There wasn’t much drama, and understeer took a little bit of effort to get; you’d have to go into a corner a little too hot to get them to understeer quickly. I was overall impressed with these tires, but unfortunately for the Bridgestones, this wasn’t enough.

The second car was the Michelin equipped car. Its behavior was similar to the first-tier tire test, and overall was still better planted, more predictable, and more confidence inspiring than the Bridgestones were.

The third set of tires for me was quite forgettable; they weren’t as good as the Bridgestones, in my opinion. I’ll ask some of the Michelin folks tomorrow what tires these were and I’ll update this post when I find out. They understeered sooner than the Bridgestones did and didn’t have as high of a limit before starting to misbehave. They’re forgettable enough for me to not even remember the name of these tires… I wasn’t impressed, and found them to be the worst in this batch.

The stability control did not engage at all for me during the high-tier tire tests.

The second exercise we did (alternating between low-tier and high-tier, of course) was a braking exercise. We would accelerate full throttle up to approximately 55-or-so miles per hour and then slam as hard on the brakes as we possibly could, making sure to hit ABS as hard as possible. We used telemetry in these cars for the braking tests that recorded the distance to stop from 50mph down to 0. They encouraged us to try and break the pedal (pun intended) to ensure we were hitting it as hard as we possibly could, which is what most people would do on the street in an “oh shit” situation. We would then write down the distance to stop, which we would later compare to the other tires we test. This course was also wet the entire time.

I have a hard time differentiating which tires were low-tier and high-tier in this group, so instead I will just list the brands tested and their stopping distances.

Just for reference, when you hit ABS, it doesn’t always behave the same. Sometimes ABS will vibrate the pedal very quickly and feel like it’s a safe, controlled stop. Other times when grip is very low, the ABS will feel like it’s actively trying to come out of its shell and kill you since it is so violent in its actions. These are the tires that are really bad, the ones that make the ABS homicidal.

The Michelins in this test were excellent. In the two tests I ran with them, they stopped at distances of 103.3 feet and 109.1 feet (different lanes and cars, hence the different results). The ABS pulsated very quickly and not very violently. The stops felt controlled and you could tell the car was stopping very quickly instead of skidding or drifting out towards whatever you would hit. I did not feel instability in the stop, and only in the last 2 or 3 feet did the ABS “dive” a bit.

The Goodyears stopped in 117.8 feet. There was some of the violent ABS action, but it wasn’t too bad. Cooper tires stopped in 125.7 feet, and felt quite a bit more drama from the ABS as most of the time it was really fighting the tires due to lack of grip. The Toyo Versado tires were a VERY scary experience because from the moment I put my foot hard on the brake, the ABS was violently trying to control these tires that simply didn’t have grip. They took an atrocious 139.9 feet to stop. Finally, the Bridgestones came in towards the end of the pack at 127 feet and were mostly drama free with the exception of a little bit of violent ABS action in the last 20 or so feet.

So far, the Michelin Premier A/S has proven to be superior than all of the competitors demonstrated today, in most cases by a wide margin. I personally am highly impressed with this tire’s ability to perform as though it was new, and even continue to outperform its competition despite this fact. The technologies they put into these tires are simply amazing, and I have a brief overview of them below. If I had to make a recommendation for the Premier A/S tires, then I would give this both thumbs up, and probably wouldn’t consider anything else if I was looking for all season tires. These tires are amazingly safe, hence why the mantra for these tires is “Safe when new, safe when worn.” Michelin claims that this holds true all the way down to their legal end-of-life, which is 2/32” tread depth.

Here is a brief overview of some of the technologies the tires have.

Expanding rain grooves
The middle grooves in the tires for wet performance expand as the tire wears down. Most tires have this channel get narrower as the tire wears, but Michelin’s product has the channel get fatter at the end, providing an even wider path for water to be evacuated.

Emerging grooves
There are grooves on the outer tread blocks that are hidden underneath the new rubber. As the tires wear, these grooves start to show beneath the wearing rubber, creating new grooves that allow more water evacuation as well.

Extreme amounts of silica
Silica give the tires incredible wet grip. Tires that had excellent wet grip in the past had to compromise on tire wear. With the silica in these tires, you don’t have to compromise as you get all the wet performance without having to sacrifice anything.

Sunflower oil
This gives the tire greater flexibility, allowing it to be used in a wide range of temperatures for true year-round driving. Granted, they’re not winter tires, but they can manage some light snow if needed.

I personally recommend looking up Michelin EverGrip technology as it is truly a fascinating way to make tires last and perform all the way to the end of their useable life. I can’t wait to see what Michelin does in the future with introducing this kind of technology to its other lines of tires, hopefully to the performance lines as well.

Hermes
04-25-2014, 09:16 PM
Can you ask them to please make those in 205/50-15, thanks!

Edit: and Super Sports and Sport Cups ;)

az3579
04-26-2014, 05:00 AM
Can you ask them to please make those in 205/50-15, thanks!

Edit: and Super Sports and Sport Cups ;)

Get with the times! :p
I had someone complaining that nobody makes summer tires in 15" and TRX sizes anymore. I'm just sitting there rolling my eyes.

Hermes
04-26-2014, 12:14 PM
Dude, what am I supposed to put on the 2002?

...and Michelin Classic still makes the overpriced TRXs, $500/tire

Oli77
04-26-2014, 02:14 PM
That's a great review BP.

Do people ever do these tests "blind"?

This would reduce potential bias with the brand and could be more telling I think.

az3579
04-26-2014, 04:48 PM
Dude, what am I supposed to put on the 2002?

...and Michelin Classic still makes the overpriced TRXs, $500/tire

:facepalm
You AND the other chapter member that came with me can't stop talking about "what about the older cars?", you know the ones that are well over 20-30 years old now. lmao
Companies can't keep catering to old cars like those anymore... that's not just an opinion but fact. There will no longer be 15" wheels on cars soon, nevermind the 13 and 14" ones. Besides, I doubt you'd be putting all seasons on your 2002...


That's a great review BP.

Do people ever do these tests "blind"?

This would reduce potential bias with the brand and could be more telling I think.

The tests were supposed to be blind but it's a little hard to ignore the writing on the sidewalls since the cars lined up right in front of our tents. lol
It doesn't really matter if you have any bias in this case because the Michelins outperformed the other tires by such a huge margin in the wet (which is what the purpose of these exercises was) that it couldn't be denied that the Michelins were superior. Michelin themselves said that in the dry, they're just as good as the best of them, but in the wet they are superior. So far, these tests have proven that fact and all of the drivers that participated agreed.

Simmsled
05-03-2014, 06:57 PM
I have the Michelin Primacy MXV4 on my Lexus, and tho it is a grand touring tire it isn't a slouch.
The tire is old, though, but has aged gracefully. Nice to see a worthy replacement coming along.