Goodrich tire a g-Force to be reckoned with

By Wade Ozeroff

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Its easy to forget that a key element of how a car behaves on the road is due in no small part to the very small contact patch that is, literally, where the rubber meets the road.

Tires are a key part of how a vehicle handles, and if you’re a driver given to ‘sporty’ manoeuvring and milking the most fun-to-drive factor from a vehicle – any vehicle, really, one shouldn’t be limited to sports cars for a bit of on-road entertainment.

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BFGoodrich is a company that takes this idea to heart, and has pushed its products ever further toward buyers who value responsive rubber with the company’s latest release, the g-Force COMP2.

Successor to the outgoing g-Force tire, with which the new product shares little except the tread-face, the Comp2 boasts a complete internal redesign that aims to set the bar higher for the Z-rated category.

The mantra Goodrich employed in designing the new product – faster acceleration, harder cornering, shorter braking – resulted in the company’s latest silica-infused compound (which is where the Comp-2 name comes from), which it states has resulted in a vastly improved hold on the road.

The tire’s performance on water-soaked surfaces is the biggest beneficiary, with the ‘wet grip’ having been improved by 30% over the outgoing generation; in addition to an 8% gain in dry traction and perhaps most importantly, improved stopping distances in any condition.

Goodrich wasn’t afraid to go head to head with its major competition, bringing a cornucopia of notable cars for performance enthusiasts, from VW GTIs and Subaru STIs, to Camaro SS and Dodge Challenger coupes equipped with tires from several other big players in the tire game, for side-by-side comparos with the Comp2.

Anecdotally, I can tell you the tire delivers as promised. The company set up a veritable torture test for the tires (and the cars – I was starting to smell some anguished clutch in a few of the demo vehicles by the end of a long day at the Auto Club Speedway).

Strangely, rather than the more agile and smaller GTI and STI, it was the Goodrich-equipped Challenger SRT8 that convinced me of the tire’s impact on vehicle handling, getting noticeably less slip in hard cornering in a big, unwieldy car with most un-autocross-like manners. I’ll go along with the Goodrich claims of improved stopping distances as well; as the Comp2 shortened my hammer-down stops by three feet in some tests we did using GPS measurements.

Goodrich attributes the sharply responsive and quick cornering (wet or dry) to the core structure of the tire’s sidewall insert, which has further bolstered stiffness and recovery, and to the unseen components under the familiar tread face, what the company calls the Dynamic Suspension System. The improved tenacity and ability to stick to the pavement (wet or dry) is the result of both a ‘chemical grip’ from the new silica compound, and the good old fashioned mechanical grip of Goodrich’s sport-tread pattern.

Pricing is not yet announced for the new performance tire line, but expect it to be similar to the outgoing previous generation g-force when the Sport COMP2 become available in spring 2012.

Sizes from 15 to 20 inch rim diameters should accommodate a wide range of fans not only of performance driving, but people who like to have confidence in their rubber’s emergency handling abilities as well.

Tags: Camaro SS, Dodge Challenger, g-Force, Goodrich, Subaru STI, VW GTI