"Up to us" with the Bridgestone Turanza GR-80

Happiness is being driven around a banked, 50-degree high speed oval in a Mercedes Benz E320 going more than 220 kph with a professional test driver behind the wheel. Your hands turn clammy, you feel the G’s press you down in your seat as the world through the windshield seems to turn perpendicular, and you smile and can’t help but break out into giggles as, gosh, wouldn’t it be cool to die this way if something were to suddenly go horribly wrong? To show us the extensive facilities of the Bridgestone Proving Grounds in Tochigi, Japan, the tire manufacturer had arranged for us to be driven around the oval and in the wet handling course. In the Benz shod with high-performance Potenzas and driven by a test driver who seemed to know no fear, we blasted around the oval several times and slithered through the wet handling course with its tricky decreasing radius turns and slick asphalt surfaces at a speed that might have caused folks with lesser abilities to smash brilliantly into the guardrails. So didja see Bad Boys II? Wooosssaaahhh....

Emerging from the Benz giddy from the G’s and just slightly shaken from that impressive demonstration of car control, it was on to the real reason why we’d traveled all the way from Manila to Tochigi. Four hours on the road from Narita airport, and which is three hours flight time from Manila, Tochigi was the place where Bridgestone chose to demonstrate the improvements they’ve made in the Turanza street tire and embodied in the GR-80 model. With 77 hectares worth of high speed circuit, wet skid pad, and specially surfaced tracks for focused testing, the Bridgestone Proving Ground would pit their new Turanza GR-80 against the closest competitor they could think of: the Michelin MXV80.

Those already familiar with the Turanza know that it’s their touring tire, commonly found on medium to full-size sedans all over the world. Offering a balance between grip, comfort, and affordability, the Turanza has always been an ideal all-season tire with just-right levels of dry and wet road handling. The new model, the GR-80, goes several steps higher by delivering on three key features that the company has identified as priorities by most of the buying public: silence, smoothness, and accurate handling. Since Bridgestone’s homework indicates that 80 percent of Asian users put importance on quiet driving performance, the GR-80 features AQ Donuts II technology, which is a blend of several fundamental features to improve basic performance and prevent performance loss as the tire wears out.

To prevent pattern noise, Silent C.S.C. (Consistent Surface Contact) blocks absorb road noise. As the tire rolls, the Silent C.S.C. blocks ground gradually, slowing down the distortion of air disturbed by the tread and thus decreasing high-frequency noise. Bridgestone’s research shows a 10 percent improvement over previous C.S.C. designs. Large size shoulder blocks are employed to prevent pattern noise as the tire wears out. Compared to the GR-50 S & S with AQ Donuts technology, the GR-80’s shoulder blocks resist movement or flex for a 22 percent improvement in heel and toe wear after 5,000 kilometers of running. Meanwhile, an outer bead filler features a new construction technique to minimize the hardening of the rubber compound over time for enhanced smoothness.

For accurate handling, stable steering, and to suppress irregular wear, the GR-80’s rounded shoulder design keeps the ground contact area of the tire constant while Dual Tread Layer II technology in the middle maintains higher wet performance even when worn. A Hydro Evacuation Surface also reduces the flow resistance of water along the groove walls and improves hydroplaning performance.

During the pre-test briefing, Bridgestone executives had explained to us that after being driven around the track’s high speed circuit and ride and noise testing track by their test drivers, we’d get to try out the tires ourselves in wet and dry handling courses and on a wet skid pad. With just a short intro drive on the courses we’d use, it would be "up to us" on how hard we’d like to flog the Bridgestone and Michelin-shod Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys.

On the ride and noise testing track in identical Mercedes Benz C200s, there was a subtle difference in noise between the Turanzas and the MXV80s, which were inflated to identical pressures. You’d have to be really listening to notice the difference on smooth roads, but on the cracked concrete, cobblestones, and rain grooved surface, the Michelins seemed to deliver a more prominent ka-chunk, ka-chunk noise as they rolled over the surface irregularities.

Then it was on to the wet handling course where the E320 driver had previously motored us around with nary a slip or slide. Although they’d exhorted us to drive as fast as we’d like, it was my first time to drive a right-hand drive car and so wasn’t about to show the Japanese some authentic crazy-ass Filipino driving. I did manage to put the Camry through its paces without scraping any guardrails. A particularly tricky acute turn on a descending section would shove the car’s nose out into protective understeer, but more of that with the Michelin-shod Camry than with the Bridgestones. The Bridgestone execs told us in good faith that, aside from the cars and tire pressures being identical, the tires were all brand new.

After that test, where we got to see the E320 driver once again tackle the course and make us Camry-driving media look like slow farts, we moved on to the dry handling course. A short course of roughly 600 meters with two chicanes at the start, and then sweeping left into a 50-meter straight followed by a sudden lane change, this was where we could show some more of the "aggressive Filipino driving" that a Bridgestone exec had happily observed in the wet handling course.

One driver attacked the course from the get-go, tossing the Honda Accords into the chicanes and understeering wildly from the turn-in of the straight. Another one — a writer from another broadsheet — went too fast and ran over a pylon, trapping it under the car’s bumper and thoroughly mangling it before coming to a stop at the finish. Bridgestone’s country manager for Hong Kong laughingly gave him a piece of the poor pylon as a souvenir. In my stint behind the wheel, there wasn’t much drama as I put the tires through their paces, if I do say so myself.

As a final test, we wandered over to the wet skid pad, still using Accords but this time shod with Turanzas all. Except that one car would have 50 percent worn tires, and the other would have brand new ones. As we’d go up to above 60kph, the front end would wash out and the car would understeer just a little more with the worn tires than with the brand new ones. For some more of that "aggressive driving" (and just to have fun and play for the cameras), we’d yank the handbrake to induce a most entertaining tail-out slide before counter-steering and pulling out with the throttle. Probably not what Bridgestone had in mind, but they did say it was "up to us" on how we’d do the driving. Later on during dinner with other members of the press from South East Asia, there was a consensus that the GR-80 was, indeed, an impressive piece of engineering from one of the largest tire manufacturers in the world.

Producing everything from tires and tubes for cars, trucks, buses, aircraft, subways and other vehicles to industrial rubber products and even sporting goods such as golf and tennis balls, Bridgestone is on a roll these days with net income of 70 billion yen for 2003, although their best year was 1998 with 105 billion yen, shortly before the full effects of the Asian crisis came about. As of 2001, they were ranked number 2 in overall market share behind Michelin at 18.9 percent versus 19.6 percent.

Since 1998, sales of Donuts-technology tires have been growing from 100 million in 1998 to nearly 200 million tires all over the world. As an OEM supplier, high performance cars like the Porsche 911 Turbo and Ferrari 550 Maranello ride on their Potenza S-02. Ferrari’s latest supercar, the Enzo Ferrari, uses the Potenza RE050 Scuderia. And of course, the Ferrari F1 team uses Bridgestone. For more sedate uses such as high speed cruising and grand touring in more mainstream passenger cars, it looks like they’ve made convincing improvements with the Turanza in the GR-80. It’s available in H/V speed ratings and from 70 to 60 series sizes.