Americans don't juggle two sets of wheels and tires, one for winter and one for summer, as the Europeans do. Call us lazy, but it has forced performance tire manufacturers to completely rethink our market and the tires developed for it, which is the reason behind the new BFGoodrich g-Force Super Sport A/S (all-season).
It's been several years since we've heard from BFGoodrich in the world of high performance tires. The company has secretly been developing a new line of rubber for the enthusiast. Replacing the KD, KDW and KDWS tire lines, the new g-Force Sport is claimed to offer a more affordable and practical option for the average gearhead.
The Super Sport A/S offers a grippy UHP (ultra-high performance) tire that not only sticks impeccably in the dry and wet, but also offers some semblance of light snow traction for those who want a performance tire all year round. Obviously, you can't have your cake and eat it too, but this comes pretty damn close. Rotation-specific and semi-symmetric, it uses lessons learned from the KDW and KDWS tires and combines them. The tread pattern and multi-compound construction is clearly of KDW origins, while the updated construction, plus the added rain and snow sipes, allow the tire to grip in the snow.
Super Sport A/S tires are constructed from three different compounds, set into three circumferential zones. On the outside and inside shoulders (#1) is the soft, dry-grip compound, molded in large shoulder blocks to give solid cornering feel. It is, however, broken up by wide snow and thin rain sipes, interspersed at random to minimize tire noise. Although the sipes on the large outer tread blocks add tread squirm and threaten to compromise ultimate grip, they're necessary for competent all-season traction. To compensate, the dry compound is built on an exceptionally stiff sub-tread reinforcement layer (#4), which adds cornering feel past the limits and also helps maintain even tire wear with the other compound zones. The rounded shoulder profile transitions to a solid sidewall, giving the Super Sport A/S the same trademark progressive breakaway feel of other BFG tires.
Inboard of the outer shoulders are the two super-soft snow/cold compound zones (#2) for snow traction. To take advantage of the soft compound, small squiggly rain sipes (used to break water surface tension) are designed to interlock and act as a solid tread block under cornering loads. The continuous center ring (#3) is the hard high-silica compound. It provides traction in the wet while at the same time increasing tire life and on-center feel. All zones are connected by a semi-symmetric water tread design that provides lateral channels and a path for water to evacuate under cornering. The non-symmetric design also helps in noise reduction. The Super Sport A/S will be offered in 29 performance-oriented sizes ranging from 205/50/15 to 255/35/20.
We tested the g-Force Super Sport A/S in the wet-mounted on an Audi A4-and in the dry, on a Lancer Evolution IX. The tire has a respectable amount of grip for an all-season item and almost the same steering feel, response and initial turn-in bite of the A046 max-grip tires-with a hell of a lot more wet traction than any other tire with the same dry grip. Plus, it's a lot quieter than most aggressive and sticky summer tires. n