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Continental EcoContact 6 Review – Achilles Heel

EcoContact 6 features and benefits

This Continental EcoContact 6 review is broken down into two parts, dry weather and wet weather. For a review of the EcoContact 6 in the snow, click here

Disclaimer: This review is my opinion, your experience may be completely different.

Short Version

The EcoContact 6 tyres are very good in the dry conditions but, in my opinion, not good in the wet conditions. I found the PremiumContact 5 to be better tyres.

Positive – Lowest wear and best fuel consumption, good in the dry

Negative – Relatively weak in the wet

2020 ADAC SUV Summer Tyre Test 

Continental EcoContact 6 Review – Dry

In the dry the EcoContact 6 give plenty of grip in cornering and braking, they give the driver a good feel for the limits and they give a very comfortable ride.

In the dry they are a very confidence inspiring tyre. In cornering, for a road based tyre, they are as good as anything I have used before.

With regards to straight line grip, the traction in acceleration and braking, in normal driving I would say the EcoContact 6 is a step below the Continental Premium Contact 5 tyres. With the Premium Contact 5 grip is fantastic from a standing start whereas the EcoContact 6 give up grip easier, even in a car which has less power.

If you are only driving in the dry then the EcoContact 6 is a good tyre in my opinion but not as good as the PremiumContact 5.

Continental EcoContact 6 Review – Wet

This is the Achilles heal of the EcoContact 6. Honestly, I have been kidding myself a little bit here since I fitted the tyres.

I wanted to believe they were better than what they were, I wanted to ignore the opinion of the other people who drove the car with these tyres. I wanted to believe it was the car or the road surfaces but now I believe the reality is, they are just not very good in the wet.

Used for around 10.000 km on a Volvo XC40 (OEM equipped). Not satisfied. Low grip on wet. Very prone to aquaplaning.

TyreReviews.com User Review

Light Rain

When the roads have a light sheen, even in warm conditions (20c +) the car would slide, even at speeds I thought were very sensible. It’s as if the rain has been mixed with a 2% concentration of diesel. I thought it was the roads or the car.

The tyres weren’t horrendous, there was just less grip than I would expect.

On a brand new car they’ve just not performed to expectation

TyreReviews.com User Review

Heavy Rain

In heavy rain I did that same thing. Overlooked some glaring performance issues because I wanted to believe they were good tyre.

I had become accustomed to experiencing straight line aquaplaning as normal. That everybody travelling the same speed as me were experiencing the same thing but I don’t think this was the case.

I thought the aquaplaning seemed to be happening more often than with the PremiumContact 5 but I had put it down to the amount of rain. That the amount of rain just happened to be more than previously.

The Most Disconcerting Thing

The most disconcerting thing about the whole EcoContact 6 experience was the massive difference between the grip the car had in the dry versus the wet. This is part of the reason why I was constantly giving them a pass even though I was being told they were hopeless in the wet. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that a tyre could be so good at one thing and so poor at another.

I said to myself, whatever the performance in the wet, the dry performance makes up for it.

When I look back at my time with the EcoContact 6 tyres in the wet, I was really over-driving. I was trying to compensate for an under-performing (in my opinion) tyre. Giving the speed I was travelling, I was far too close to the limit of traction.

I said it in a Michelin CrossClimate 2 review, when I buy a tyre, regardless of the cost or the brand, there is a minimum level of acceptable grip a tyre should give in each weather condition. In the wet, the EcoContact 6 are the first tyres I have used, which do not meet that level of grip in the wet. In my opinion.

The Change

Now I am using Michelin CrossClimate 2 and using these tyres brought into stark focus all the things I mention in this article about the EcoContact 6 in the rain. The CrossClimate 2 showed me how many allowances I had been making for the EcoContact 6 tyres in the wet. That it is not normal for the car to understeer at normal speeds. That it is not normal for a car to aquaplane at reasonable speeds.


Continental EcoContact 6 Review – Summary

To repeat the first paragraph. In hot dry conditions I found the EcoContact 6 to be great tyres, perhaps not as good as the PremiumContact 5 tyres but very good.

In the wet I found the performance less than acceptable.

Find performance parts on ebay




This page was last modified Jan 18, 2022 @ 12:31 pm

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