After comparing four different kinds of tyres on dry and wet surfaces, the Tyre Reviews team is back on the winter testing grounds to make another interesting test. This time around, the channel is evaluating two types of winter tyres, one for milder winters and one for countries that get more snow and ice such as Finland or Canada, plus a studded tyre, designed for climates which have a lot of ice.
The test vehicle is again a Volkswagen Golf 7, riding on 205/55 R16 tyres. The team is doing laps on an icy circuit with three different tyre sets - Nokian WR SnowProof, Nokian Hakkapeliitta R3, and Nokian Hakkapeliitta 9.
More tyre comparisons:
The result with the first is a respectable 1:22 minutes - Tyre Reviews doesn’t even give summer or crossclimate tyres a chance because that doesn’t make a lot of sense on ice. Next are the Hakkapeliitta R3, which have a different structure and rubber compound. The time is 11 seconds faster and the overall handling of the car feels much better, according to the test pilot.
For the third run, the Golf gets studded tyres and… “everything is so much more fun and grippy.” While the studded tyres make you feel like a rally driver behind the wheel, the time around the icy circuit is not vastly different - 1:05.6, or just 5.4 seconds faster than the second set of winter tyres.
At the end of the video, there’s one final test - a drag race on ice between two identical Golf hatches, equipped with two different types of winter tyres. The results are obvious - the Nordic tyre is much better and has more traction than the tyre for milder winters.