Bridgestone Americas Inc. recently launched its new Blizzak 6 performance winter tire with a Winter Driving School Event in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
The Blizzak 6, which will be available in May of this year, is designed for sedans and sports cars.
The tire features Bridgestone’s ENLITEN technology and will come in over 38 sizes ranging from 17-inches to 22-inches.
The new Blizzak 6 marks the first application of ENLITEN technology in Bridgestone’s winter tire portfolio.
“Blizzak 6, specifically, is sort of our sports car flavor of Blizzak,” Davis Adams-Smith, director of public relations for Bridgestone, told MTD at the Winter School Driving Event.
“So we are beginning with our enthusiasts with the ENLITEN technology and from here, we’ll bridge into the more mainstream products later this year.”
Adams-Smith added that the company will be launching its first grand-touring, high-end luxury product soon and from there the company will go into “more mainstream touring all-season tires.”
Boasting Blizzak 6
Bridgestone launched the Blizzak 6 in order to stay ahead of the evolving market, as Adams-Smith noted that more and more customers are wanting bigger fitments on their sports cars.
“People are wanting these premium tires in larger sizes, so the Blizzak 6 was our way to meet those needs,” he said.
Todd Chapman, senior product manager at Bridgestone, said the tire was designed around the enthusiast market.
“The key thing we were looking at for this product versus our previous-generation product was additional life,” he told MTD.
“Ultimately, you’re buying this tire for a certain season. Ideally, you’d like it to last additional seasons, so you don’t have to replace it as often. This is where the ENLITEN technology comes in.”
Chapman said that with its ENLITEN technology, Bridgestone has essentially changed the compound of the tire to provide enhanced service life, but also give consumers “all the other performance attributes that they’re looking for: wet performance, breaking performance, performance in snow and things like that.
“In the past, prior to the ENLITEN technology, you might have been able to give yourself that additional life, but it might have a tradeoff of reduced dry traction or wet traction because you have to have a hard compound to get that extra life.
“Instead, we’re able to essentially give you a tire that does all of that – everything the old tire did plus additional life.”
Another prominent feature of the Blizzak 6 is its tread pattern. Chapman said the goal was to provide more biting edges for driving on snow-covered roads.
Bridgestone is also adding 20 additional winter sizes to the Blizzak line.
“These are sizes Bridgestone didn’t previously support, so this is opening the car park to how many people can buy Blizzak tires,” said Chapman.
Winter tire importance
At the event, Chapman shared a slide that showed the average of total sales for tires across North America in a year.
The most tires sold were touring tires at 81 million units, according to Bridgestone’s research.
“Today, we are focusing on one of the smaller segments, winter tires, which sold around eight million units, but it’s very important to us,” said Chapman.
Chapman named a couple reasons for this, the first being that 40% of tire units sold in Canada are winter tires, according to Bridgestone data.
“If you want to sell tires in Canada, you need to have representation in the winter market. If you don’t have that, your name is not going to be out there and you’re not going to sell summer tires or all-season tires.”
The other big reason for the launch of the Blizzak 6 is because of the Blizzak brand name and its equity.
Chapman said consumers know the Blizzak name and tie that to strong winter performance.
“So we really want to keep that brand presence active and strong,” he noted.
Blizzak evolution
Chapman touched on a few innovations that have happened over the lifetime of the Blizzak line.
Blizzak tires are made with multi-cell technology, which are essentially “little pockets formed in the compound of the tire that suck up water and keep it off of ice,” he said, “so the initial surface of water is pulled up where you can get rubber on ice for additional ground contact.”
Within the compound, Bridgestone has added silica for extra grip. And Blizzak tires feature 3D zigzag sipes.
“The intent is that for the life of the tire, you’re still going to get the same grip and performance because it has all of those biting edges,” said Chapman.
The Blizzak 6 is replacing older tires in the Blizzak line: the LM-25, LM001, LM-32 and LM005.
The LM line was Bridgestone’s performance-oriented winter tire designed for sports cars, sedans and even SUVs or CUVs on the sportier side.
“Think larger rim diameters, larger widths and higher speed ratings,” said Chapman.
