July 3, 2015
Refinement, sophistication and the ability to cope with the weather of all seasons out on the road.
You can say this about many of today’s crossovers and SUVs. No longer pickup trucks with boxy bodywork, today’s crossovers and SUVs are evolving. Built like a car, they bring many of the creature comforts and refined driving experience we expect from a passenger car.
The newest Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season tires are designed to be a perfect match for these vehicles and the way we drive them. Refined, sophisticated designs and technology, and the ability to provide traction in dry, wet and light winter conditions, these tires deliver the comfort, driving feel and traction that complements the utility vehicle that has evolved into our daily driver.
In this test we are comparing a trio of the newest tires for crossovers and SUVs - the Kumho Crugen Premium, Michelin Premier LTX, and Yokohama Geolandar G055.
Kumho’s Crugen Premium is its most sophisticated crossover/SUV tire yet, featuring a highly stylized tread pattern tuned to reduce noise, and molded with an advanced all-season compound that focuses on blending traction, tread life and rolling efficiency.
Michelin’s Premier LTX is their first design to bring EverGrip technology to crossovers and SUVs. First used in the very capable Premier A/S touring tire for passenger cars, Michelin’s EverGrip technology features a combination of advanced tread compounding along with a unique and evolving tread pattern designed to help retain wet and winter traction as the tire wears, therefore minimizing the unavoidable impact of treadwear on foul-weather traction.
Yokohama’s Geolandar G055 follows a similar path, utilizing a premium all-season compound blended to deliver a balance of wear, efficiency and traction, molded into a pattern that further aids traction while reducing tread noise.
To see how these Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season tires drive and perform, the Tire Rack team conducted a Real World Road Ride and Performance Track Drive, comparing them side-by-side on 2016 Porsche V6 Cayennes. Our evaluation used new, full tread depth 255/55R18 tires mounted on 18x8.0 wheels.
Our 6.0-mile loop of expressway, state highway and county roads provides a great variety of road conditions that include city and highway speeds, smooth and coarse concrete, as well as new and patched asphalt. This route allows our team to experience noise comfort, ride quality and everyday handling, just as you would during your drive to school or work.
Out on the road, the Michelin Premier LTX led the group overall with good handling, a refined ride and only minimal tread pattern noise and little boom when encountering patched potholes and expansion joints. Not too far behind overall was the Kumho Crugen Premium, which also felt "well sorted out" as one of our testers described it. That well-sorted feeling came from this tire’s blend of responsive steering and stable cornering, along with a smooth and comfortable ride. The Yokohama Geolandar G055 followed a moderate, but noticeable step back. This tire handles well, but when driven side-by-side with the Michelin and Kumho tires it generates a little more tread and impact noise, and rides somewhat firmer than the others.
Our 1/3-mile per lap test track course includes 90-degree street corners, a five-cone slalom and simulated expressway ramps. Run in both dry and wet conditions, the test track allows our team to experience the traction, responsiveness, handling and drivability normally only encountered during abrupt emergency avoidance maneuvers or competition events.
Our test track evaluation in dry conditions revealed how similar these three tires are when asked to stop, turn or maneuver in the dry. The distance needed to perform our 50-0mph panic stop test for these three tires was separated by just over one foot. Steady-state cornering traction was virtually identical across the group, and the time needed to lap our handling course was spread across just one quarter of a second. Other than small subjective differences in the feeling from behind the wheel when driving at the limit where the Yokohama Geolandar G055 held a small advantage, not much separated the capability of these three tires.
In the wet it was a very different story. It was here the Premier LTX came into its own, displaying clearly superior traction, and essentially resetting the level of what we expect in the wet from a tire in the Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season category. The Crugen Premium delivered handling, traction and stopping distance performance at levels that are very appropriate for the category, but a noticeable step behind the Premier LTX. Coming as a notable opposite of its dry performance was the wet capability of the Geolandar G055 which struggled to find traction, taking almost five seconds longer to lap our course and 35 feet longer in our panic stop test than the best tire in the test.
Winter weather is often unpredictable, and snow-covered roads change with every passing vehicle as they churn snow into slush or pack it down to polished ice. A constantly changing test surface makes side-by-side comparisons difficult, so we use a dedicated winter testing facility in Northern Sweden with acres of groomed snow that provides the consistency we need to get reliable acceleration and braking comparisons. This facility also has a prepared snow-handling course where we evaluate the stability and control of each tire during abrupt maneuvers. To simulate the icy conditions found at intersections or the black ice experienced out on the highway, we use ice at a local hockey rink and measure acceleration and braking traction.
Similar to the strength found in wet conditions, the Michelin Premier LTX delivered good overall traction and handling in the snow, and led every winter test parameter and subjective rating for this group. A big step behind was the Yokohama Geolandar G055, which struggled to provide modest snow and ice traction. The Kumho Crugen Premium exhibited a disconcerting combination of modest acceleration and braking traction mixed with very poor cornering traction. Drivers of all-wheel drive vehicles should take care when driving in snow on this tire, as the all-wheel drive system’s aid to start-up traction can cause a false sense of security when it comes time to turn.
Our Real World Road Ride features a relatively flat 6.0-mile loop of 65 mph expressway, 55 mph state highway and 40 mph county roads along with two stop signs and one traffic light every lap. Our team drove each tire approximately 500 miles over the course of several days. Since we wanted to compare fuel consumption results that typical drivers would experience, our drivers were instructed to maintain the flow of traffic by running at the posted speed limits and sustain the vehicle’s speed using cruise control whenever possible. They did not use hypermiling techniques to influence vehicle fuel economy.
| Tire | Test MPG* | Gallons/Year @ 15,000 Miles |
% vs. Most Efficient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kumho Crugen Premium | 22.5 | 666.7 | -0.9% |
| Michelin Premier LTX | 22.7 | 660.8 | -- |
| Yokohama Geolander G055 | 22.5 | 666.7 | -0.9% |
| *Our evaluation used Race Technology DL1 data loggers to record true distance travelled. | |||
All of the tires in our test were designed with some attention paid to rolling efficiency and eco-impact, and generated nearly identical observed fuel economy, with only 2/10ths of a mile per gallon spread across the group. Based on our results the spread between our lowest and highest observed fuel economy would result in an annual difference of about six gallons of premium gasoline. At the current cost of $3.00/gallon, it would amount to an annual difference of less than $18 for drivers driving 15,000 miles per year.
It’s important to note our test’s fuel consumption measurements follow consistent procedures designed to minimize variables that could influence the results, however they do not represent an exhaustive long-range fuel consumption study. While our procedures require the test vehicles in each convoy to run under the same prevailing conditions, the week-to-week differences in ambient temperatures, barometric pressures and wind speeds that we experience over a season of testing can influence vehicle fuel consumption and prevent the absolute mpg values of this test from being compared directly against those of others.
Larger differences in consumption between tires may indicate a difference that might be experienced on the road, while smaller differences should be considered equivalent. As they say, your mileage may vary.
Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season tires keep evolving like the vehicles they support, providing ever-improving levels of refined ride, confidence-inspiring handling and impressive traction in dry and especially wet conditions. The Michelin Premier LTX delivers very good road manners during everyday driving, and raises the bar for traction in wet conditions. Snow traction follows suit, delivering a significant advantage over the other tires in this test. The Kumho Crugen Premium is a great addition to the category, and delivered very good road manners along with good dry and wet traction, but struggles when there is snow on the road. The Yokohama Geolandar G055 trailed the others, with a slightly firmer ride along with wet and snow traction that fell well below expectation.
Kumho Crugen Premium (Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season): Crugen Premium (KL33) tires are Kumho’s Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season light truck tires originally developed for Original Equipment use on Hyundai Santa Fe crossover vehicles and now available in sizes for a wide range of crossovers, SUVs and light trucks. Combining sophisticated looking low-profile tires and large rim diameter wheels to enhance vehicle appearance, Crugen Premium tires also provide all-season versatility, including traction in light snow. Read more.
Michelin Premier LTX (Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season): The Premier LTX is Michelin’s Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season light truck tire developed for the drivers of crossovers, sport utility vehicles, light-duty vans and pickup trucks looking for tires that deliver category-leading wet grip when new and when worn. And even when worn, Premier LTX tires are designed to stop shorter on wet roads than leading competitors’ brand-new tires, as well as provide all-season traction on wintry roads, even in light snow. Read more.
Yokohama Geolandar G055 (Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season): The Geolandar G055 is Yokohama’s Crossover/SUV Touring All-Season tire developed for the drivers of small- and medium-sized utility vehicles looking to combine year-round traction, handling and comfort with eco-friendly environmental impact. Loaded with Yokohama’s latest technology for the journeys ahead, Geolandar G055 tires are designed to offer responsive handling and long-lasting treadwear in every season, even in light snow. Read more.
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