Both the Cooper Evolution Winter and the Discoverer True North take center stage in the winter tire market, each exhibiting distinctive performances in handling, comfort, and longevity. Which tire will emerge victorious in this frosty face-off?
Table of Contents
Key Takeaway
- Dry Conditions Performance: The Cooper Discoverer True North outperforms in dry conditions due to interlocking lugs in the central tread area, ensuring superior surface contact.
- Snow Traction: The Cooper Evolution, with its wider tread voids, performs better in fluffy snow. It retains snow particles in its interconnected grooves, thus enhancing traction.
- Wet Traction: The True North excels in wet grip due to its aggressive siping pattern. However, the Evolution Winter provides superior hydroplaning resistance with its broader grooves and sweeping arms, efficiently dispersing water and preventing traction loss.
- Ice Traction: The Discoverer True North shines on icy terrains, providing superior braking, acceleration, and handling. Though, the Evolution Winter still performs commendably when fitted with studs.
- Comfort Levels: While the True North offers a quieter ride due to packed up shoulders and advanced pitch sequencing technology, the Evolution Winter excels in impact comfort due to its softer tread compound.
Performance in Dry Conditions
The effectiveness of a tire’s grip on dry surfaces depends on two primary factors.
I’ve discussed these both below.
Directional Grip
The key to achieving strong directional grip lies in the central tread area, which determines the contact between the rubber and the road surface.
And if you are wondering, why middle? Then know, that, when a tire rolls straight, the weight is mostly concentrated on the middle area.
Now having said that, it makes sense, why the Cooper Discoverer True North takes the lead.
The tire utilizes interlocking lugs in this region, ensuring superior and uninterrupted surface contact, leading to enhanced performance.
On the other hand, the Cooper Evolution lacks to its counterpart, due to wider tread voids. It although features a near-continuous running central (most) rib, which is also streamlined, its still more spacious.
So it isn’t able to provide ample rubber to road contact, resulting in 9-foot longer braking distance (calculated on average).
Handling
Handling is influenced by the tire’s shoulders area and overall weight distribution.
Why shoulders?
Well, because, when a vehicle corners, the weight shifts towards the edges of the tread, due to inertia, putting pressure on the lugs in that region. And the capability of these lugs to engage with the road significantly affects handling performance.
That’s why here again the Cooper True North is pulling ahead, providing a better contact patch.
Whereas the Evolution lacks, not only because of its spacious tread design, but also because of its weight.
It’s heavier structure basically causes increased flex in the tire’s lugs, resulting in diminished steering feedback and an imbalance between understeering and oversteering.
So True North is the clear winner in overall dry traction section.
Snow Traction
On fluffy snow, the Cooper Evolution emerges as the clear winner, with its unique tread design, featuring wider tread voids, enables improved snow-to-snow contact.
The lug voids retain fluffy snow particles within their interconnected grooves and snow vices, enhancing traction. Additionally, the pronounced directional pattern facilitates paddling, scooping snow backward, and generating superior forward momentum.
On the other side, the Cooper Discoverer True North lacks, with its more packed up design, which isn’t able to hold as much snow.
And of course, you also don’t get the similar snow scooping abilities here as well.
Wet Traction
Two primary elements affect wet traction are discussed below.
Wet Grip
Wet grip depends on sipes.
These are slits in the tread which soak up water particles, by expanding. So that’s why tread flexibility is also important here.
Now, although both tires feature substantial siping, the Cooper Discoverer True North has a slight edge in wet grip performance, as it incorporates a more aggressive siping pattern, with more, you can say teeth to them.
Though Evolution still manages to outperform its brother in the hydro/aquaplaning test.
Hydroplaning Resistance
Hydroplaning occurs when water forms a thin layer between the tire tread and the road surface, leading to reduced traction. Wider grooves in the tread help prevent hydroplaning.
The Cooper Evolution Winter excels in this aspect with its broad grooves and sweeping arms.
These features efficiently disperse water in all directions, resulting in superb hydroplaning resistance during both straight-line and curve aquaplaning tests.
Ice Traction
When it comes to icy terrains, the Cooper Discoverer True North tire clearly outshines its counterpart in braking, acceleration, and handling tests.
And here, the key difference lies in the tire’s design and features that enable better grip on this slippery terrain.
It incorporates more biters, offering larger tread voids, abundant notches, dual and multi-angled siping, and snow vices oriented in both lateral directions.
And on top of that, its asymmetrical pattern is a plus too.
On the other hand, the Evolution Winter with less aggressive siping pattern, and wider grooves lacks to its bigger brother.
Though its performance is still commendable, when you put studs on this boy.
Comfort Levels
Ride comfort is not only the tire’s ability to absorb road shocks, there are other factors too. There’s noise, ride stability and so on.
Speaking of noise first, it gets generated more on voided up tread pattern, as it has to with air particles hitting the walls of the tread (where the impact of hitting is what rendering the unwanted sound waves).
Now the Cooper True North, with more packed up shoulders don’t allow noise to get in (a lot). And the remaining that manages to get in, producing noise, is handled with the tire’s sophisticated pitch sequencing technology.
This tech offers slight geometric variances in the tread blocks, creates disparate tones that cancel each other out, reducing noise levels.
The Cooper Evolution Winter now, may be louder, it still offers a better impact comfort performance, due to its relatively softer tread compound, which enhances its shock absorption ability, resulting in a smoother and more comfortable ride.
So yes, both tires excel in different aspects of comfort.
Summing Up
In conclusion, both boys exhibit distinct strengths in different performance areas.
The Discoverer True North exhibits commendable performance in dry conditions, demonstrating superior directional grip and handling due to its interlocking lugs and effective weight distribution.
Furthermore, it excels in ice traction, courtesy of its abundant notches, dual and multi-angled siping, and asymmetrical tread pattern.
The tire also offers a quieter ride, thanks to its packed shoulder design and sophisticated pitch sequencing technology.
On the other hand, the Cooper Evolution Winter shows superiority in snow traction with its unique tread design and wider voids, facilitating better snow-to-snow contact.
Its softer tread compound also delivers improved impact comfort, offering a smoother ride.
In terms of wet traction, the Evolution Winter outperforms with superior hydroplaning resistance due to its broader grooves and sweeping arms, although it falls behind slightly in wet grip.
Hence, both tires offer a well-rounded performance with respective strengths suitable for different driving conditions and preferences.
Note that the ultimate choice between the two would rely on the driver’s specific needs and driving circumstances.
