Review - Continental Tires -ExtremeContact DWS

[AbsoluteMayheM]

A few weeks ago I replaced my P Zeros for a set of Continental Tires - ExtremeContact™ DWS. I am running the 20" stock GM rims. Front are 245/45 ZR20 and the back are 275/40 ZR20. Since then we have had a mix of awesome top down days and some insane drenching rains I thought I would give a "ROAD" review. I have not taken the car to the track or drags, just rubber on the street. So my impressions and comments are only regarding your daily driving and some street racing.

First of DWS stands for Dry Wet Snow. The tread pattern is aggressive and looks great. At several car shows I have been to I have had lots of comments on the DWS tires and people say they look great on my car and dig the tread pattern.

A "feature" these tires have are "customer ware indicators", which is basically on the treads that touch the road there are DWS imprints in some of the treads. Apparently when you can no longer read DWS imprints on the tire, its time for a replacement. Neat feature but my last tires were almost racing slicks before I replaced them!

Tire Noise - Keep in mind, my camaro is a convertible. None. I have had no humming, buzzing or whurring noises coming from the tires. Top up or down. I know some reviews complained about their tire brand making noises, but I am not getting anything. No issue here with tire noise.

Performance "DRY" - On my old PZeros, my best drag time was 13.6, since I have not taken the car to Shannonville with the new shoes yet, I wont have a time comparison, so I am going to go by "feel". It doesn't FEEL slower at all. I was worried that in the spring/summer I would miss the P-Zeros because once they were warmed up on a nice day they worked great. I have driven many of the very same back roads on some nice days that I did with the P-Zeros and honestly I would say the DWS are handling the same, maybe not BETTER. But, these are new tires and I am pushing them but not to the limits. But my impression is these tires are great!
Having bought my camaro on Dec 22 2012 and putting on 56k, I was worried how other tires would compare to the Pzeros. I was more or less happy with the Pzeros, for me it was an issue of feeling comfortable and in control when pushing the car in and out of corners. Or driving it at +180km/h. Day to day driving in the dry, these are great tires. I am actually impressed. specifically since they are a DWS tire! Compared to the Pzeros which were a summer performance tire.

When I went for a "drive" in the back roads, on roads I am familiar with; I felt very comfortable and in control. The car did not seem loose or that I was missing anything when pushing the car. Take this with a grain of salt, these are new tires and I am likely only pushing them about 80% of what I would have on the Pzeros. But I would say my worry about missing any performance of the Pzeros are gone. At least while these tires are new and have LOTS of tread!.

Hard braking - I would say (good or bad) these would be on par if not better then the PZeros. Last week on July 2 I drove the 401 from Brampton to Kingston in the 3pm traffic and braking/hard braking and stopping was excellent. I was pretty confident with the tires and stopping traction by the time I was past Pickering. Great work out for the brembo brake pads and tires! Color me impressed!

Burnouts - I would say these would more or less be on par with the Pzeros. I am trying not to destroy these new tires but I did want to play with them somewhat and compare them to the old Pzeros. Taking off the nanny's, droppi1ng in to sports mode, going manual, from a dead stop I was able to do a decent burnout and lay down some nice 11s. the smoke and noise was not overly loud or impressive but neither was the Pzeros. so again I would say more or less on par. These are brand new tires so there is a TON of traction so I did have to push the car to do the burn out. The reason I mention this is that I feel that these tires were designed to claw into the road and very little was considered for doing burnouts aka smoke/noise. Again I was just trying to get a feel for the tires when I did a few burn outs, I was not trying to melt off the rubber.

Performance "WET" - Two words .. HOLY SHIT! WOW what a difference! There are a few roads to my Grandparents that were just horrible for hydroplaning. When the rain would hit the roads and start to puddle up, it was like driving on ice some times, one section of the road has 100-200 transport trucks driving it daily to the GoodYear tire plant, so there are MASSIVE ruts in the asphalt. with the Pzeros it did feel very loose when driving on bad rainny days down good year road, but man, the DWS cut through these puddles like they are not there! They are of course still there and these road conditions are very dangerous, but I felt 1000 times safer driving. I did not push it more, I just felt like I had a lot more control and traction in these extremely wet roads.

With the DWS I also had some very heavy rain driving conditions on the 401. To be honest the DWS made it easy. Handling and traction in the wet was great, really what kept me on my toes where other cars and poor visibility due to the rain and the 401 HAZE you get from the other vehicles. Traction was not my concern, seeing and BEING seen was really the primary factor. I will ignore the idoits that stay on the 401 and drive 60kmh because we all know they should stay home or play golf in the lightning, but reasonable people that would normally drive their car 110-120 on the 401 dropped to 90-100 and do to visibility; that's understandable and due the the conditions at the time, it seamed reasonable to me. I just kept with the faster traffic flow. The car did not feel loose or like it was a struggle for traction. Honestly at 100 in horrible rain, i barely noticed the wet road at all. I would say these are a massive improvement over the Pzeros.

Performance - Snow - I have been to the north pole for work twice since Dec 2014, neither time did I take my car! LOL .. I took my camaro out of storage in late March after the snow was gone. I got the DWS in May, so that this time I do not have anyway to judge how these handle in any snow conditions. I can tell you that the Pzeros were freaking dangerous/impossible/horrible/worthless in the snow. even light 1" snow. Snow on Pzeros turn a fire breathing 420hp muscle car in to a cowardly lion once there is snow on the road! (for those garage queens out there)

My over all impression after a little more then a month. What a great investment!! I was really worried about spending the money on a dry/wet tire and not going with a summer performance tire, I was really worried they just would not perform. There were many other tires I considered getting this season, Pilots, Comp2 and some others but I read a bunch of positive reviews about the DWS and went for it. My convertible is by NO means a garage queen and I an not worried about putting miles on it. I work from home and we have two other vehicles, so I don't consider the camaro a daily driver, but I want to drive it all the time! and I tend to!

It's hard to give a total review and not have anything really negative or bad, maybe the price? these were a little more expensive then the other tires. But if you own cars like this, i don't really think "budget tires" or Canadian tire sales are our concerns. Not to say we ignore price all together, but $ was not my issue.

Over all I am happier then I expected to be, for anyone driving on the roads and needs a new set of shoes for their car .. camaro or just their daily driver. DWS are a great investment. For track/drag performance .. search the forms!

I should have taken a photo when the DWS were stacked in a pile before they were installed.

[JimE]

Nice review. Thanks for sharing.

[Hilflos]

I had Conti DWS on my last car, and have a favorable enough impression of them that I am planning on a set as my cold weather tires later on this year.

My last car (6cyl. Genesis coupe) was 120 hp short of my current one, but did just fine in 3" of snow with them on.

[backbaconrules]

Great review. I was look at these.

[KickerZ71]

Great review
How about a picture

[Bizaro]

Good tires for the snow

[AbsoluteMayheM]

I added a photo of the rears. I'll likely get brakes done on it by the end of the summer and I will take a better photo of the tires.

[LOBBS]

I put the Conti DWS on mine in November. My SS is daily driven in all the weather can throw at me. They got me around with more confidence in the Midwest winter than the Durango I traded in for my Camaro. I'll absolutely put another set on when the time comes.

[Rudy@Tirerack]

+1 Nice Review!