Tyre Awards

300,000 tyres, 700 brands and 9 categories later it is virtually impossible to choose and outright winner. But the 2023 WhatTyre Tyre of the Year awards wouldn’t be what it is without, well, a flagship Tyre of the Year. So, a decision must be made, and this year Michelin’s CrossClimate 2 SUV is the worthy winner of our overall accolade. Before we get into the detail of why the Michelin CrossClimate 2 SUV has won, it is also worth setting that particular tyre’s victory in some overall context.

The sharp end of the performance tyre spectrum is the domain of the supersports or ultra-ultra-high performance (UUHP) tyre. Completely road legal but also designed to deliver superior performance on the track, these products are tasked with the weighty remit of providing a dynamic yet safe driving experience to the world’s most powerful cars in both wet and dry conditions. WhatTyre has identified five supersports tyres that excel at this.

With budget brands now accounting for 38 per cent of 17- and 18-inch tyre purchases in the UK, it is more important than ever to recognise products that deliver the handling and stopping performance required by executive and performance saloons. To identify our favourite Performance Tyres of 2023, WhatTyre has looked at the three most popular sizes for 17-inch and larger rim diameters, 225/45 R17Y, 225/40 R18Y and 205/45 R17W. As was the case in 2022, this year we have separated tyres aimed at the highest echelon of the performance car world into their own category – Supersports Tyres.

Around 35 million passenger car tyres are sold in the UK each year, depending on exactly what you include in your sums and which sources you consult. Whichever way you look at it, that’s a huge number of car tyres and most of them are what we call summer tyres. Despite the name, summer tyres are mostly used all year round. And that’s for two reasons: because we are a fairly temperate island; and because not everyone knows about the year-round benefits of all-season tyres (see separate section for more on those). Whatever you call them, summer tyres perform best when its warm, offer the best dry performance and typically last well. Many are also tweaked to offer strong performance in the wet too, something that is highlighted on the European tyre label as well as in magazine tyre tests.

Winter tyres are a very small part of the UK tyre market compared to their year-round alternative, all-season tyres. But if you want to guarantee traction in the most extreme cold weather, they remain the best tool for the job. WhatTyre’s Winter Tyre of the Year 2023 shortlist offers the ten best-performing options for an optimal cold weather driving experience. The ten tyres selected represent the best the winter tyre market has to offer, according to both the latest seasons of the best independent European tyre tests and our newest algorithm, Tyrescore 2.2 “Bugatti”.

Eco tyres and EV tyres have a very close relationship in that both focus on delivering high energy efficiency and high longevity. As we mention in our recommendations for electric car tyres, the lines are blurred considerably by the broad range of “EV-Ready” (to borrow Bridgestone’s term) products now on the market. While the specialist EV tyres generally start with performance principles tuned specifically towards enhancing range, reducing noise and providing greater longevity, the tyres on our eco tyre list have evolved from generations of touring tyres for cars. This means that they are generally well-rounded products, with features that promote enjoyable, comfortable driving as well as improving efficiency.

The replacement market for electric car tyres has begun to swell as tyre manufacturers bring new products to the market. These tyres fit broadly into two major categories: models that fit into existing tyre ranges that contain technologies applicable to the demands of electric vehicles (EVs), or brand-new products designed exclusively for EVs. The difference between these two categories could be described as compatible or specialist products for fitment on EVs; however, this sort of distinction runs the danger of undermining the quality of products that have been designed to suit both EVs and internal combustion engine (ICE) powered cars.

Motorists continue to choose the space and high visibility seating position offered by SUVs. In fact, they are so popular that many new cars have adopted looks leaning in the direction of SUVs. That inclination has created the CUV (crossover utility vehicles) and impacts the 2023 WhatTyre Tyre of the Year rankings because we have to define what an SUV is for the purposes of this category. Building on the platform formed by the previous two years of WhatTyre Tyre of the Year awards, this year we have tightened up our judging criteria to create a more robust and competitive 2023 award. We began by filtering our database of around 300,000 tyres based on the three leading SUV tyre sizes according to market research specialists GfK. From here we filtered products according to their Tyrescore – our market-leading bespoke tyre comparison system – requiring all short-listed tyres to score above seven out of 10 or above in both one of the three key sizes and across its range as a whole on average. We then interrogated the results according to the following further criteria: category appropriateness; specialist category tests and require relatively recent third-party magazine tyre test results.

Drivers want mobility all year round. In the past, that meant changing tyres for the winter months or compromising on noise and comfort with an old-school all-season tyre. Not so anymore. As we have seen in previous years, the latest generation of all-season tyres offer impressive year-round performance without the downsides. But does that description apply in the all-season SUV tyre niche? In order to find out, we started with the bespoke Tyrepedia database that powers WhatTyre.com. Tyrepedia features data relating to more than 700 brands and 340,000-odd different tyres. We filtered our database according to three top SUV tyre sizes, which this year were: 235/60/18, 215/60/17 and 235/55/19. Accreditation such as the three-peaks-mountain-snowflake (3PMSF) marking helped show winter performance too.