Tire Review - Continental Sport Contact 3

Cars tested with these tires:
- Volvo S40 Mk2 2.0D 136ps, 340Nm.

Tests performed:
- I went through 1 set's of these.

Dry grip:
- It's a good honest tire. The compound has a good grip. It will grip better while hot, but the cold grip decent.
- The dry cornering abilities have quite good.

Wet grip:
- Good wet grip. The compound clearly works right "off the line".
- The wet cornering was surprisingly good.
- Out of all the tires I've tested, its the one that shows less gap between dry and wet grip.

Aquaplaning resistance:
- Good. Not brilliant, but still very good. It's not a tire to run fast through a large water pool. But it does handle occasional small pools every now and then. Clearly a tire fit for a car WITH LSD.

Progressiveness:
- Good. Not brilliant but its progressive and gives good warning.

Integrity maintenance:
- Not it's strong point. You can abuse it all you want and it will wear evenly and with all it's parts, however the temperature range has it's limits.

Compound:
- Don't have that much info about the compound, but it's soft and grips good. The wear resistance is normal under normal use... abuse-it long enough and it get's greasy.

Longevity:
- Normal. Should endure more (like bridgestone for instance) if you take the price tag under the equation. 

Coherence:
- The tires side-walls are thick but rather soft. The tire can go through hard bends keeping some of it's contact patch. The fact that it's more comfortable that a Bridgestone clearly shows here .
- It handles heavy cornering under acceleration decently...until it gets over it's temperature zone.

- Probably it's biggest fault. It you abuse-it and let it get too warm, it will get greasy and start slipping. Nitrogen it's a MUST with this tire if you what to drive it hard... and still you will find it's limits.

Balance:
-  Drive them hard enough and you will need to balance the tires. Very well balanced from factory.

Load Behaviour:
- A flaw. The tire clearly was not meant to be abused. Maybe it can hold abuse without loosing shape or getting greasy in a cold weather country, but not in a portuguese summer day.