The Best Michelin Tires For SUVs, According To Consumer Reports

If you are in need of new tires for your vehicle, chances are pretty good that one of the brand names that you will be considering is Michelin. The French company has been a mainstay of the tire industry for over a century, and the tires it produces are generally regarded among the best in the world. Michelin even took the top spot in SlashGear's own ranking of tire brands. Another publication that agrees is Consumer Reports, which also ranked Michelin as the best overall tire brand on the market.

Consumer Reports tested eight different Michelin tires to determine how they brake, how much noise they make, how they handle various surfaces, and more. Several of these are designed with SUVs in mind, either specifically or to be used on cars too. While all of the tires tested earned very good ratings and a "CR Recommended" indicator from Consumer Reports, there is one Michelin tire for SUVs that ranks the highest of them all: the Michelin CrossClimate 2.

These are all-season tires specifically made for SUVs, and not only does it sit at the top of the list for Michelin SUV tires, Consumer Reports has it ranked at the top among tires of its kind from every brand. This is thanks to an incredibly high owner satisfaction score and that it performed either well or excellently in every single testing area, be it wet and dry braking, ride comfort, or rolling resistance. One of the more impressive things is that these tests were based on a 95,000-mile tread life, which is 35,000 more than the number two-ranked tire of this class, the Vredestein HiTrac. 

Whenever you see the phrase "all-season tires," you always hope that the tires can actually deliver on that promise. It's one thing to drive down an open road on a hot July afternoon, bur it's another to be in mid-January and trudging your SUV through the snow. Knowing what goes into a good snow tire is important for those in colder climates, and many of these people opt to buy tires specifically with snow, ice, and winter in mind, which is exactly how snow tires are different from all-season ones. Michelin even has options for that, like the highly rated and aptly named Michelin X-Ice Snow tires. For performance SUVs, you can opt instead for Michelin Pilot Alpin PA4 tires. Both of these have received top marks from Consumer Reports for snow traction and ice braking.

Some just want to have those all-season tires, though; according to Consumer Reports, choosing the Michelin CrossClimate 2 instead of a specifically designed snow tire provides plenty of performance. These tires received the exact same top marks in testing for snow traction and ice braking as the winter-focused tires. In fact, these are the two areas of all that were tested where the CrossClimate 2 earned the highest score possible. An all-season tire should be able to handle these things just as well as it does braking on a dry road or hydroplaning, and these pass with flying colors. For those wanting Michelin tires on their SUV, Consumer Reports really does find little to no fault with the performance that the CrossClimate 2 provides.