Testing tires is a difficult job (and probably the reason we
haven’t conducted such a test since 1989). But tires are a most
critical part of your car, your only connection to the road.
There are many difficult-to-control variables that affect tire performance and make accurate testing a challenge. For one,
the temperature of the track surface, which can have a significant effect on how a tire performs, can vary widely over the
course of a day.

First off, we decided against evaluating the popular all-season tires in favor of an examination of 11 high-performance ones, what are labeled in the industry as “maximum performance” tires. If you’re like us, you want to know which tires will best contribute to the performance of your vehicle, accepting the inevitability of having to switch to snow tires when the white flakes appear. Even if your home turf is snow-free, you still have to deal with driving in the rain. Hence, all the tires here were put through three wet tests and three dry tests.

Finding the right tire for your ride is like trying to pick
the right mattress for a good night’s sleep. You know
that buying the wrong one can have dire consequences, but you can get dizzy just wading through
the jungle of choices. And unlike mattresses, you
can’t take new tires for a test run. That’s where we
come in.

With the introduction of twoall-new mid-sizers,much hasbeen accomplished in this classfor 2006,but the Honda bench-mark is still the standard bywhich the others must bemeasured. ¦Honda Accord EX V-6Highs: Muscular handling, quicktransmission reflexes, serious acceleration, best-dressed interior.

The Fusion was alone in the group inhaving six speeds in its automatic,although you wouldn’t know it from the“D”and “L”choices on the shifter. A fewdrivers reported some hunting betweenfifth and sixth gears at freeway speeds.More disturbing was the occasional jerkysnatch into first gear at parking-lot speeds.Inside,the front seats drew favorablereviews for their firmness and good posi-tioning. The Ford,however,was the onlyone with a power option that moves justthe seat position; backrest angle is changedwith an ordinary manual lever. We alsothought the turn-signal lever was oddlypositioned; it angles up toward 10 o’clock.

By a small margin over theToyota,we thought Honda’sselection of interior materialwas most pleasing. Both Hondaand Toyota have more legibleinstruments by far than theothers. This Honda transmitsplenty of information up fromthe road,too. Call it road noiseand tire noise,or call it part ofthe Accord’s driver-involve-ment program.