Sport-Tested in All Four Seasons

About a year ago I put a set of Continental ExtremeContact DWS06 Plus tires on my eighth-gen Honda Civic Si road-and-track car. I got to try them out in a wide variety of climates, conditions, and road surfaces and generally came away impressed.

My 200-horsepower front-drive Civic is not the most severe test of a sporty tire, but I did my best to use and abuse these Contis for a few thousand miles. I ran a small-and-tall 205/55R16 because I thought 16s would look cute on the car. This might have hindered the tires’ ability to shine in handling somewhat; the taller-than-stock sidewall would have allowed for a little more lateral squish than Honda’s engineers had planned on. But with a light, low-power machine like this, I don’t think it’s a major concern.

I drove on mountain roads, highways, smooth and rough pavement, in four seasons and New York for this test.

This is an Ultra High Performance (UHP) All-Season tire from an established high-end tire brand. That means it’s designed to provide as much grip as possible without significantly penalizing cold-weather functionality. Read closely if you don’t know about this stuff, because it’s important context. Winter tires are not just deep treads for snow, they’re made of a specific compound that remains pliable in colder temperatures. On the flip side, summer tires are not just maximum slickness for speed, they’re chemically made to be most responsive when they’re hot. A UHP all-season splits the difference, sacrificing rolling resistance (fuel economy) and costing more than a standard “does OK at chill speeds” all-season.

These DWS06 Pluses are currently selling with a 50,000-mile limited warranty and three years of roadside assistance, with asterisks you can read on Continental’s site. They are in the upper-middle of pricing on UHP all-season tires, and considerably more money than a basic all-season tire.

You can find them with W (168 mph max) or Y (186 mph) speed ratings in over 80 sizes from 16-wheel sizes up to 22s.

What Cars To Put Them On

These tires are generally intended for sporty cars, true sports cars, and crossovers, including EVs. To be honest, my FG2 Civic is on the low end of hardware that I’d expect to see with these tires. If you must have the absolute max dry-weather grip, you still want a dedicated summer UHP tire. But if you OK leaving a little on the table so you can run one tire year-round (outside Canada and America’s high-elevation wild west) for a few consecutive years, you should be looking at these.

More specifically, these would make sense on anything from a mid-level BMW, to a Corvette, Alfa Stelvio—really any car with sporty inclinations that’s driven in a big range of weather.

Highlights

Nature decided that my first real testing miles would be in righteously sodden conditions. The all-season ExtremeContact Contis cut through rain very nicely; I felt like they maintained stability on wet roads particularly well, even being forgiving against some late-turn braking. We’re talking about road driving here, not track, so I didn’t have them on the ragged edge. But I wasn’t able to feel any inclination to hydroplaning at all, which inspired a lot of confidence.

Once the sun came out and the roads dried up, the tires woke up even more. Even with the tall sidewall I mentioned, which is desirable for straight-line traction but less so in turns, I felt great responsiveness through the steering wheel.

Dry-condition braking also stood out to me as particularly impressive. Braking is a weak point in eighth-gen Civic in general, but I got much more stopping satisfaction with these than I did on the Lionheart tires the car’s previous owner had mounted up.

I also kind of like the “DWS” rubber wear indicators on the tread. It’s a little cheesy, but, they stand for “Dry,” “Wet,” and “Snow,” and wear down to indicate where you’ve still got performance. In other words, the “S” wears down first because snow performance is first to degrade. Then wet, and when you can’t see any letters at all, hopefully your tire’s been turned into a rope swing or mulched by the recycler.

Weak Spots

There’s going to be a little fuel economy penalty with any kind of high-performance tire. More grip means more rolling resistance which means more fuel burn. If efficiency is your priority, there are others optimized for eco-driving. I can’t say what kind of mpg penalty they put on my car, because it’s running a different tune than it was with previous tires.

I didn’t find the road noise to be bad. And your car is probably better insulated than my old Honda. We didn’t get much in the way of snow in New York’s Hudson Valley this winter, but there were a few days of ground cover. I found the snow performance of these Contis to be totally decent. Braking is probably where I felt their weakening the most, but turning and stability still seemed pretty solid. I also have a set of Bridgestone Blizzaks, hardcore dedicated snow tires, and they’re superior in super-cold slush but I found the edge most noticeable in taking off and, as I already mentioned, braking.

Value Verdict

This is a versatile tire with above-average performance just about everywhere. They’re appropriately priced at the higher-medium level among competitors—solid value for money. For example on an eighth-gen Civic Si, running the stock-spec 17-inch wheel size, you’re looking at about $160 per tire. A Michelin Pilot Sport (one of the most expensive common competitors) is more like $190. Something on the lower end of good stuff, like a Cooper Zeon or Khumo Ecsta, can be as low as $140.

These all-season Contis won’t have the upper-limit warm-weather grip of a dedicated summer UHP tire, but for socially acceptable spirited driving speeds I found them quite satisfactory on my angry little Honda. From a safety perspective, they stood out in some of the most important areas: Braking and wet-surface traction. Run them with confidence on any car that you want great street performance out of year-round.