We check out the Continental Cross Contact ATR in our studio this time.
Continental's aim is to provide a tyre that can take care of city driving and the occasional bush driving by creating a mix of All Terrain & Highway Terrain tyres. Let's have a closer look at the features of this tyre in the video
Full Transcript:
- Good day. Today, we're going to be looking at the new Continental Cross Contact ATR. G'day, welcome back to Tyre Review. And today, we're looking at the new Continental Cross Contact ATR. Conti are billing this as the tyre for those who live in the city but go out to the bush, or up to the farm, or to the Highlands or whatever every now and then. So they're not a full-on all-terrain tyre but they are gonna fill that gap if you get stuck in a tricky situation. This is actually a brand new tyre which they are releasing in Australia, or they've released in Australia for a while.
They're more limited brand of patents so you can get them into 16 and 18 inch, or 16, 17, and 18 inch size at the moment and roughly between 60 and 70% profile, so that's the depth there. But I have seen that they will getting them up to 20 inches in the near future. Did notice that there's no LT construction so they're more aimed at your SUVs and utes that aren't going to be doing a huge amount of towing and that sort of stuff. Let's just have a look at some of the features of the tyre. So these tyres, these all-terrain tyres, have a pretty good density of tread across the centre here, which is gonna mean that they're better rolling resistance or less rolling resistance.
But let's talk about these great wide channels on the outside here for both dispersing water, which means they're gonna be less likely to aquaplane, they've got less channels through the middle here, which theory decrease the aquaplaning potential but also all the sipes through here is something that Continental points out as really helping that too.
But they do actually have this chunky shoulder-blocks, and the tread actually wraps around the shoulders here too which is something that you don't see much in the lighter duty all-terrain tyres, well not up until recently. And they've also got these things here which look like they're actually stone ejectors too, so they're less likely to get stones stuck in these big gaps in the shoulders here. Means it's less likely to actually get to the punctures.
These are the sipes through here, which is gonna help with water dispersion and also these bigger grooves through here and this bigger groove again on the shoulder. Conti are also billing this as a quieter tyre as well. All-terrains can be reasonably noisy, so they've got these little noise blockers in here, which is actually where they've joined the individual shoulder-blocks together with these little strips of rubber, which is actually theoretically gonna block more noise from making it into the cabin.
The other thing I like about these tyres as well, is that they've got these rim protector strips around the outside, which means if you're unlucky enough to actually hit the curb with these tyres on the fancy wheels won't take the brunt of the force. The tyre will actually take that instead. That's a good asset if you've got nice wheels on your fancy new SUV. This tyre is actually going on our Subaru Outback test vehicle for the next 10,000 Ks, so we'll report back after those Ks and just let you know what our tester thought of them.
