(upbeat music) (engines rev)
- Okay, all right.
Okay, okay, all right.
Hey, you know, one of the things that makes, you know,
doing wheels and tires so much fun
is every once in a while you get to use them.
And one of the tires that constantly gets asked
by a lot of people is, is Michelin actually as good
as what everybody says they are?
After all, Michelin was one of the brands
that treats you, dines you, takes care of you,
and makes sure that no matter what,
you have triple-ply toilet paper in every single hotel room
that you stay at when you're reviewing their product.
But are they actually any good?
So we decided to take probably one
of the most common Michelin tires out there,
one of the highest performing tires in their segment,
the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, out to Road America
to see if they're really up to snuff.
I'm gonna drive around and talk to you
about what it feels like.
So don't forget to subscribe,
Wheels, tires, suspension, be sure to check us out
at fitmentindustries.com,
and let's go make some noise at 7:00 in the morning.
(upbeat music)
So most of them of the time, when we do driving reviews,
we drive them around the block,
and we say, "Wow this is a really great tire."
And we talk about all the times that we drove it
like at WYR or something like that,
but really we drove it like twice,
or like we get some like
just normal driving experience with it.
But we never actually get
like road track experience.
And we wanted to do that with Michelin,
because that's like what Michelin is known for.
And so we did. (engines rev)
We went out to Road America, myself, Mario, and Lars,
who is probably the biggest Michelin fanatic in the world,
and decided to see if it was actually worth it.
We went out there, (engines rev)
started out the day at about 45 degrees,
went out for our first drivers run
at about 9:00 a.m., 42 degrees,
in the rain, with this car,
and I think I died.
I was so scared, 'cause I didn't actually know
if the tires were gonna be as great as I needed them to be,
because in all honesty, that's the thing, right?
Tires, and when you go (engines rev)
read about tires, everyone tells you
about all the silica compounds,
and they use very fancy marketing words
that you don't really know or understand
like science words like polymer
and elasticity and things like that.
And really, (engines rev)
what you want to know
is does the tire perform depending upon the temperature
that the tire is at, what you're putting through it,
and where the car actually needs to go?
How responsive do the tires feel to this little circle-y bit
that's ultimately gonna keep you on the track
or off the track?
And when the Pilot Sport 4S was actually
initially developed, that was the main game.
That was the biggest thing that they had to figure out,
because the Michelin Pilot Super Sport was a really
well known, well received, well accredited tire
that they had out there for almost six years.
And really the development of the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S
was because the competition was getting closer,
and they actually acknowledged that.
They said that over the past few years, it had gotten,
you know, where it wasn't as much of a better tire
as a step up more than it was starting to become comparable.
And so Michelin needed to go back to the drawing board
to make sure that they made a tire
that was properly good, to make a tire
that was actually going (engines rev)
to be a significant step forward,
that was gonna move the goalpost
just about 500 yards away again,
except you couldn't run to those goalposts anymore.
You had to like use chopsticks to like grab
and pull yourself over to the goalpost.
I mean, it was a pretty large feat,
and when they made the Pilot Sport 4S,
which actually doesn't stand for four seasons,
what it stands for is the fourth iteration
of the Pilot Sport family tire,
it really was going to be a difficult scenario.
And so what they ended up doing is they brought it back
to their R and D facility and tested out
over 3,000 different compounds for this tire.
3,000 different compounds.
60% of them focused on the inner tread wear
of the actual tire, because one of the things
that the Michelin Pilot Super Sport had a difficulty
doing was overall wet and rainy conditions,
which when we went to the track today,
the very first thing that we got
to experience were cold tires on Road America
in the rain in 600 horsepower.
So we really wanted to make sure just
for our own livelihood that they were a good tire,
and that's what they actually developed
a good chunk (engines rev)
of this tire around, which was the fact
that you could drive it in the wet and the rain.
And let me tell you right now,
honestly, it was a fantastic driving experience.
It was insane how well connected the car got
with the tires and how much once they were warmed up
how good they stayed up to temp
and how good they stayed connected to the ground.
And the reason that they're able to do that specifically
with Michelin and the Pilot Sport 4S is because of the way
that they use two different rubber compounds
depending on where you're at on the actual tire.
The inner ribs shoulder blocks use a different compound
that's a little bit more rigid.
What that allows you to do is it gives you more
precise handling at higher speeds,
because there's less flex,
the contact patches remaining as solid as they can.
Whereas the outside (upbeat music)
ribs shoulder is actually a different compound entirely.
It's actually much softer, (engine revs)
and what that does is when the tire gets up to temperature,
it allows the tire to flex and heave and hoove and ebb
and flow so that you're never really losing traction,
it's just constantly kind of meandering around,
staying connected to the tire
but also staying connected to the ground.
And that's something that Michelin Pilot Sport 4S had done
insanely, insanely well.
Now Pilot Sport 4S's, (engine revs)
they're not cheap.
They're not the most affordable tire out there.
They're not even really the most available tire
always out there.
A lot of times, you may find that these only come
in the 17 to the 21 inches, and they have a wider range now,
but the smaller sizes usually have a tough time staying
in stock, because these are more
for the 19's, the 20's, and the 21's.
I mean, after all, they come as an always supplied tire
on a lot of your new high performance sports cars.
So is it actually worth it?
Is it worth a notable difference?
When you look at all the different tiers
of what Michelin and the other tire competitors, right,
the tire for wet performance, sustainability, mileage,
you know, dry performance, all that sort of stuff.
The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S (engines rev)
doesn't always take the cake as like number one
in every single one of those fields.
But what it does do is it does almost all of them
as like a number one or number two field.
And that's super, super important
for Michelin Pilot Sport 4S,
where you're driving it both on the track
and on a normal street at 7:00 a.m. in the morning,
because it may be all the rave
in the world to have the best dry traction performance
you could ever have and have the most aggressive tread wear
that you could ever have.
The problem is (engines rev)
is when it's sprinkles sprangles,
you're screwed, you can't do anything.
You're gonna be driving around,
and you're gonna be sliding into a corner.
And that's what's really tough with a lot of people
when they're picking their tires.
They always want the most aggressive
of like one category of what a tire should rate for.
And the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S does a lot of those things,
almost all of those things extremely well.
And that's why a lot of people really do have the tendency
to love the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S.
When I got mine up to temperature right around 100 degrees,
90ish degrees, it was performing
insanely, insanely well. (engines rev)
I was dropping my tire pressure down
to 29, 30 pounds of pressure.
It got up to 42, 43 pounds of pressure
once we were getting into our hot laps,
And at no point did the tires ever feel oily.
At no point did the tires feel like
they were really ever giving.
There was some flex to it, but it was predictable.
You knew what the tire was doing.
There was at no point where you didn't trust
when the tire was flexing where you were going to go.
And that's really, really important,
especially as you continuously (engine revs)
beat up these tires, because you want
that consistent performance.
It doesn't more so matter if you've got really,
really great traction on the first run
if you lose it all on the second run
for no other reason than your tires
lost their actual traction.
You guys are actually trying to figure out
what works for a tire for you,
and you're not really focused (engines rev)
very heavily on, let's say,
oh, bump, bumps suck,
if you're not overly focused on solely budget.
You're actually trying to look and say,
"You know what
What actually gets me a really great value?
What gets me a good bang for buck?"
If I'm going auto-crossing,
if I may be going to WYR,
or if I'm going to Road America, Road Atlanta,
or I'm gonna find myself driving the same car
that I'm running on the track with,
the 4S really does check a lot of boxes.
And it looks super good. (engines rev)
Like it's not a bad looking tire at all,
which is always a weird thing to say,
because tires inherently aren't flashy whatsoever.
They're kind of boring.
And that's why a lot of times you see people focus
way more so on like wheels and suspension
and flashy and noisy things.
But really what's gonna make you smile
is a good set of tires,
and I think that if you guys are looking,
and you've got your eyes (engines rev)
on the 4S's, I highly recommend them.
They spent a ton of time developing this tire.
They spent a ton of time bringing it in sizes
that mostly is gonna fit the Euro,
the high end, the sports cars, a lot of the domestics,
a lot of the things now that are running around
on 18's and 19's and 20's and 21's.
Now in that same token,
there's a lot of people that are gonna say,
"Okay, I want a Michelin Pilot Sport 4S.
It's what everybody talks about.
It's what everybody on the internet says
that you should buy."
But here's some things that would probably,
I'd say you probably don't need it, all right?
Number one, (engines rev)
there's a chance that you're not gonna need it
if you're not gonna utilize all of it.
I mean, it is a pricier tire.
So if you're gonna buy it,
make sure you're actually using it
for all of its intended purposes.
The purpose of a Michelin Pilot Sport 4S is that you get
ultra high performance performance,
that doesn't make sense,
but ultra high performance to a point
of where you're using it on a track,
you're using it in autocross, you're using it,
you're getting it up to heat,
it's going through heat cycles, you're burning the rubber,
you're utilizing it, you're-- (car beeps)
you calm down, you're noticing it
when you're driving it around.
I mean, you're really, you're counting
on the tires to do something.
If you're driving your car,
and you're never really counting on the tires
to do anything besides exist,
the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S is probably,
aren't the tires that you need to grab,
because they're gonna be over-engineered for your purpose.
And I say that specifically, (engine revs)
because there's a lot of people
that don't actually need more
than like a decent summer tire
or don't need more than like a decent all-season tire.
This is really doubling down on performance.
So if you don't need it,
then you probably don't need this tire.
Another thing to remember is
that this is mostly gonna be heavy stacked
towards larger diameter wheels.
Now they do have some smaller stuff, hear me say that,
I know that, I know Michelin might even
get angry with me on that,
but a lot of the focus
is in the higher diameter tire sizes,
and the availability is mostly focused around those things.
If you're going into the smaller tire sizes,
there's gonna be a whole different game
that you're gonna want to play.
Finally, I think in all, or in total,
if you're looking at a tire that's gonna perform
when you're abusing it and using it,
and also you're taking that same tire,
and you're driving it on the road,
you're taking it to the track day,
and then you're driving your track day car home,
this is a great tire for you.
It's worth every single penny.
It's worth every single penny
even with the mileage warranty that they have on it,
which they have a mileage warranty on it,
Steve will put it right here
what the mileage warranty is,
even with that, even with all the things
that they promise, all the things that they guarantee,
just speaking strictly from the perspective
of somebody who's driven on a lot of fricking tires,
the one that's always (engine revs)
the most predictable to me
has always been the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S.
And we have used it, we've abused it,
we've thrown it through everything we possibly could,
and no matter what, it still fricking performs.
And the only thing that would probably do better
at Road America from a Michelin family,
if you really are abusing it,
would be the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2
or the Sport Cup 2 Connect,
in which case you can say adios to longevity,
but say hello to traction,
in which case you really are narrowing in on performance.
But hey, let us know what you guys think.
If you do have the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S's,
of course, let us know.
Obviously, I have them on some of my cars.
I have ran other brands, so I'm not bought
or anything like that.
I just really like these tires.
They do really well.
And I also rubbed them on, I mean,
I scrape every once in a while.
And I can be a Stancey boy too, listen.
(engine runs)
Yeah, you like that?
Dynamic suspension causes me to scrape.
I'm gonna give you guys a painful noise.
(tires rattle)
Sounds like a bucket of eels fighting each other
over a piece of bread.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
We will see you later.
Peace.