Yahoo Autos Pirelli Adds the New P Zero All-Season Plus 3 Tire to Its Lineup
Pirelli has released a new all-season tire designed for high-performance cars, the P Zero AS Plus 3.
More than 94 percent of tire customers buy all-season tires, Pirelli says, so this one is intended for vehicles such as the Ford Mustang, Genesis G80, BMW 3-series, and Mercedes-Benz C-class.
The tires are on sale now starting under $200.
Pirelli has launched a new tire in its all-season lineup exclusively for the North American market and geared toward high-performance cars.. New to the Pirelli Plus line, it joins the six other tires already in the lineup as the highest-performing of the bunch.
After all, more and more sporty and even full-fledged sports cars are coming with all-season tires from the factory, such as the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro, the Ford Mustang, the Subaru BRZ, and the Toyota GR86. While an all-season tire will never match a summer tire either in the dry or the wet, even sports-car owners are deciding that today’s near-1-g all-season tires offer sufficient dry-weather grip and longer life with the additional capability to deal with cold temperatures or even a dusting of snow.
The P Zero AS Plus 3 tire blends together the performance of Pirelli's P Zero range with the rest of the Pirelli Plus lineup. It also features a new tread pattern, compound, and construction and comes with a 50,000-mile limited tread-wear warranty, which Pirelli touts as beating that of any summer-tire warranty. Pirelli also is using a new 3-D sipe horizontal interlocking system with increased tread pattern stiffness to improve snow performance and uses polymers in the compound that it says makes for more even and efficient wear. Pirelli claims that the tire will perform 99 percent as well as new in wet or snowy conditions when the tread is half worn, in part because the sipes open as the tread wears.
In the process of developing this new tire, Pirelli engineers emphasized improving the mileage through changes to the tread pattern and compounds used in the process. Pirelli claims that this new tire "is designed to deliver smooth wear, improved snow traction, excellent performance on wet, and a comfortable ride with reduced cabin noise."
The P Zero AS Plus 3 is available in 31 sizes from 17 to 22 inches, making it available to a wide range of vehicles, but their key fitments for this tire include the Ford Mustang, Genesis G80, BMW 3-series, and Mercedes-Benz C-Class.
Taking Them Out for a Spin
While in Las Vegas, Pirelli put this tire on various cars for us to drive in different conditions. We spun around a small road course with some SUVs and a drive out to the Valley of Fire on the Scorpion AS Plus 3 tires to experience both wet and dry conditions as well as normal on-road conditions. On the track, Pirelli featured the P Zero AS Plus 3 on Toyota Supras and put some P7 AS Plus 3 HP tires, which have a more balanced attribute most suitable for passenger cars, on some sedans that we took around the road course.
As we went around the various tracks in different cars, these all-season tires felt better than expected and you could really feel them gripping to the road. When asked about why Pirelli chose to put which tires on which cars, they responded by saying that there are a few factors in how they make that choice. First, the vehicles chosen are popular and recognized vehicles that appeal to the broader audience, second, to demonstrate the various applications of the all-season tread patterns. A Pirelli representative also told us that the priority was on highlighting capability in "traction, handling, braking, and most importantly, comfort in various weather conditions."
While the North American market has long bought all-season tires in huge numbers—Pirelli says 94 percent of all tires sold today are all-seasons—more and more variants that skew toward high-performance are bringing sports-car drivers into the all-season fold. Buyers are choosing one tire that can be used all year round and can perform well in weather that's hot, cold, and in between. The P Zero AS Plus 3 sets itself apart with a 50,000-mile warranty, and brings solid performance in both wet and dry conditions.
As for us here at Car and Driver, we will still continue to swap back and forth between summer and winter tires to get the best performance we can out of each vehicle we drive, but it's good to see that the all-season tire continues to elevate its game.
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