"Never heard of them, mate." The people at Cooper Tires must be used to hearing that by now – in a world fixated with the power of the brand, even something as relatively mundane as a car tyre is usually chosen on the basis of whether or not you're familiar with a name. But Cooper, the self-claimed "10th-largest tyre manufacturer in the world", is gunning for your attention.
In certain circles, the company is extremely well-regarded, having been involved with motorsport for decades, including rallycross, World Rally Championship and Formula Three. Cooper has also been on a regional charm offensive this month, as a major sponsor of the Dubai International Motor Show.
I’m in Austria to participate in a product launch, because I want to know more about what goes into engineering the black rubber bands that separate our cars from road, track and dune.
Cooper hails from the United States, and celebrated its centenary last year. Today, the company employs more than 8,000 people worldwide and has a long and distinguished history, but it has never been an “OEM” (original equipment manufacturer). In other words, when any new car has rolled off a production line, it hasn’t been fitted with Cooper tyres, and when the originals need replacing, chances are that owners will stick with whatever brand it had last time.
But Cooper is fed up with playing second fiddle to the tyre-industry establishment. With the launch of new products being showcased in Austria, the company is forging ahead with some fairly radical design technology.
The tyres in question are the Zeon 4XS Sport (designed for medium- and large-size SUVs), the Zeon CS8 (for what it describes as “outstanding wet grip”) and the Discoverer A/T3 Sport, which is an off-road tyre. This information may go over your head, as it does mine, so the only way for any of us to be convinced of their worth is to try them out. Which is why I’m here, on a dry but chilly day, at the Red Bull Ring circuit in Spielberg, which is used for Formula One racing.
Not having experienced Cooper’s previous offerings, I’m at a distinct disadvantage. After all, how am I supposed to compare them with the brand’s past tyres? It’s a cause for concern, but I roll up my sleeves and get on with the job in hand, which happens to be putting an enormous Mercedes-Benz AMG M-Class through its paces around a section of the F1 circuit, fitted with new Zeon 4XS Sport tyres.
With a co-driver egging me to go faster, it’s remarkable that anything this big and heavy can take corners at speed – the physics at play here defy belief, and as the tyres squeal on the limits of adhesion and the car feels like it should be toppling over at any second, I’m reminded of just how far design has come.
In the United Kingdom, some police forces used to employ Range Rovers as motorway patrol cars – something they eventually had to stop, because during high-speed pursuits, some of them would actually flip over onto their roofs with predictably disastrous consequences. The fact that a two-and-a-half-tonne SUV can do what this AMG is doing here is testament to Merc’s chassis engineers and Cooper’s tyre technology.
After almost making myself motion sick, it’s time to move on to a wet-handling circuit, where I take a diesel C-Class Merc around a twisting track that’s partly bone dry, partly soaking wet. As the surfaces switch between conditions, I’m encouraged to keep pressing on with plenty of power to see how the Zeon CS8s cope under duress. As I enter a tight, swooping left-hand hairpin bend, I go from dry to saturated and the Merc shimmies its rear for a split second before regaining composure and taking the course I set for it.
The next exercise shows the company is putting its money where its mouth is. For this task, there are two identical C-Class Mercs, one fitted with the Zeon CS8s, the other with comparable tyres from a rival manufacturer. Both cars are fitted with identical sensors so their braking performances can be compared, and what I’m to do is drive flat-out towards a marker, then slam on the brakes to see how long and far the car takes to come to a complete standstill on a wet stretch of tarmac.
I’m in a group of four journalists, all taking turns to do the same thing. We do it time and time again, in both cars, and the results are almost entirely uniform: the car with Cooper rubber stops three metres shorter. Three metres might not sound much, but it could mean the difference between life and death for an errant pedestrian.
What, though, makes one design of tyre better than another? Apart from the obvious differences in tread patterns, which are there to do more than just look pretty, it’s the different rubber compounds used in their construction. As with most things to do with motoring, you get what you pay for. Cooper markets itself in the middle ground – not cheap but not outrageously expensive, either, which is a benefit of being a relatively small player in the industry.
Part of the company’s development work is carried out by high-profile ambassadors: the former F1 driver David Coulthard and the multiple Dakar Rally-winning driver Xavi Foj. Both are on hand today, and it’s obvious that they’ve been instrumental in getting these new items to a point where they might otherwise not be. Coulthard has been testing them on the world’s racing circuits, as well as the twisting roads around his Monaco home, while Foj has been pushing the off-road tyres to destruction in one of the world’s toughest motorsport competitions.
With input from such pros, it’s little wonder that the company feels it can take on the better-known competition. The association has also resulted in quite radical designs. For instance, large circumferential grooves in the tread patterns clear water, mud and sand quickly and efficiently from the contact patch, while large central ribs increase feel and driving response. Using new algorithms, the tread blocks are split into different sizes to reduce harmonic noise, while the edges of the individual tread blocks are “chamfered” to help eliminate uneven wear and to reduce contact noise on the road.
The Zeon 4XS Sports boast numerous advanced technological features and benefits, including what Cooper calls “noise damping structures”. To those unfamiliar with the technology, these look like hundreds of tiny dimples within the grooves of the tyres, yet they break up tyre roar, increasing refinement levels in the cars they’re fitted to. Their lightweight construction reduces rolling resistance, too, which improves steering response, and the multi-compound tread provides better grip levels than ever before.
Still trying to get my head around the huge differences in stopping distances between two almost identical products, I’m told to get into a racing suit and helmet – complete with a head- and neck-support device – so Coulthard can demonstrate the levels of adhesion using tyres with no tread on them whatsoever. He’s familiar with this circuit, having raced (and won) here during his F1 career, but today I’ll be a passenger in his KTM X-Bow – a road-legal two-seater racing machine made in Austria.
As he fearlessly throws this incredible car into impossibly tight corners at speeds that I daren’t even contemplate, it simply grips and goes without once losing composure. Five adrenaline-soaked laps later, I extricate myself and stand in the pit lane, legs shaking and face grinning like a buffoon.
It has been an enlightening experience, and I have a new-found respect for the people who spend their lives improving the designs of one of the most fundamentally important parts of any vehicle, no matter what it is or where it’s used. More than rubber bands filled with cushioning air, tyres are incredibly complex items we give precious little thought to, until they go bang and we’re stranded on the hard shoulder, or worse.
motoring@thenational.ae