Continental Ultracontact UC6 tyre review

Tyres! If there's one upgrade everyone must make, it is tyres. Almost always, stock tyres on every passenger car is a bit of a compromise and you can’t blame a manufacturer for it. India is a cut-throat market, margins are small and tyres always get the short stick. Stock tyres are made for two things, efficiency and longevity. These tyres give the manufacturer its official ARAI numbers and since they are the first set of shoes on your car, you’ll drive them till millimetres off their life. The Ceat SecuraDrive tyres on the i20 are another example of OE fitment that are used for both the i20 and the N Line.

Considering the sporting nature of the N Line, a bit of an upgrade would have made more sense, however it’s unit economics at play here. Nevertheless, Continental sent us the UltraContact UC6 tyres to test. I’ve swapped the SecuraDrive tyres for the UltraContact UC6 set, and right away, there’s less road noise and more grip in the dry. I know it isn’t fair to compare them to a set of tyres that have done over 11,000km so let me not do that. I’d have to buy a new set and use them back-to-back on the same car to give you a proper comparison between the two.

Now that the UC6 tyres are on, besides low tyre noise and improved grip, I have seen a marginal drop in fuel efficiency of the N Line. The immediate difference in driving with fresh rubber is that you tend to push the car more, trust its grip more and brake harder. The side effects of a new tyre are a heavier foot for sure. That aside, the USPs of the tyre according to the manufacturer is good grip in the wet. I’ll have to wait for the next monsoons for that but at least in the dry, the UC6 is a good swap for sure.

The UC6 tyres sit somewhere in between the budget options and the premium ones in terms of pricing. You will find them online or at a store at anything between ₹8,000-8,300 per tyre. I’d recommend doing the whole alignment and balancing bit every time you change your tyres. A few hundred rupees will go a long way in the life and efficiency of the tyres.