Tire: Pilot Super Sport
Category: Max Performance Summer
UTQG (treadwear): 300 AA A
In terms of maximum performance summer tires available on the market, there really can be only one at the top, and that one for me is the Michelin Pilot Super Sport. This may just look like any other max/extreme summer tire when you're staring at it, but it's far from ordinary. I don't want to call this tire special, but it was designed to be used on supercars, specifically it's used as original equipment on the Ferrari 599 GTO. So equipping it to your Subaru WRX STI or Dodge Challenger Hellcat is really going to make a difference. This tire was developed on the same technology used to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring. Michelin uses a Bi-Compound tread rubber featuring multiple outboard and shoulder compounds to enhance wet and dry traction. Internally, they are spun by a Twaron cord that is probably one of the lightest and strongest available on a street tire. So you'll get weight savings and great structure. Just like all other summer tires, these should not be used in ice/snow or at near freezing temperatures.
It's hard to find things wrong with this tire. I mean, you won't get a huge amount of miles out of a set, but that's probably not what you're after if you are shopping this tire. They'll probably conk out after 50,000 miles or so. But those miles will be full of awesome traction. Wet traction is superb, especially at higher speeds. I have heard some customer complaints about noise when these tires get later in life, but honestly I don't know of too many performance tires that don't suffer from that problem. I've had so many customers say they'll be repeat buyers, even with the slight noise increase. Always going to be trade offs in life I suppose.
