Foul-Weather Falken

It’s often said that you have to live in a climate to really experience it. Canadians may vacation in the warmer climes, but we’re certain that cold, snow and ice are a vital part of our national identity … you have to live in snow for half the year to understand. Don’t tell Fontana, Californiabased Falken Tire, who have formally launched their new winter product, the Eurowinter HS439. Introduced at the 2008 SEMA show in Las Vegas, the HS439, and winter tire products, in general, are new territory for Falken in his hemisphere, although the firm has multiple offerings in Europe and Asia that include studless, studdable and light truck product.

The Euro winter HS439 is a performance winter tire designed for broad line passenger car installation but focusing on performance coupes, sedans and wagons.

What’s Inside

The Eurowinter HS439 uses a silica tread compound for enhanced low-temperature flexibility and extended tread life, and is designed to be a cold-season replacement tire for T, H and V-rated products. Like all performance winter tire products, the HS439 is not speed rated (the rating is in the service description) and it carries the Rubber Manufacturers’ Association “snowflake” certification. In winter products, the tread pattern is especially important, and here

the HS439 differs from earlier Falken foul-weather tires in several aspects. The most obvious is the asymmetry of the pattern. Asymmetric treads are common on ultra-high performance summer products and are progressively moving down into broadline all-season tires, but they’re far less common in the snow. The design uses outside blocks that are aggressively radiused at the shoulder for high-speed stability on dry/wet pavement, with the inner tread zone contributing to much of the snow and ice traction. Both zones are heavily siped in an interlocking “zigzag” pattern to maximize the number of biting edges without adding excessive tread squirm. Four relatively wide circumferential grooves channel water out of the contact patch.

The design is modern and makes sense from a performance winter perspective. The major issue in the performance sedan/crossover category is the suspension design and consumer expectations. Auto manufacturers are selling sports car handling in heavier, more utilitarian platforms and are achieving it with rear and all-wheel drive, as well as independent rear suspension systems that add negative camber as the suspension articulates. Combined with front suspension settings that are typically calibrated for terminal understeer, meaning zero to slightly positive camber, and the result is heavy involvement by both inside and outside shoulder elements in dry-to-wet conditions.

In dry conditions, conventionally lugged winter tires can be overwhelmed by the camber bias. The Eurowinter HS439 addresses this with strongly radiused shoulder blocks, offering better lateral grip in dry road conditions but with enough block rigidity (sipes are lateral across the blocks and interlock) to limit squirm, resulting in sharper turn-in qualities.

Wider voids running across the shoulders mean the tread elements flex in predominantly the forward direction, which is a major contributor to traction under acceleration and shorter stopping distances under braking. From a “tire wall” perspective, the presentation of the HS439 looks mod-ern and not too different from speed rated high-performance all-season radials, with prominent sidewall branding. The Eurowinter HS439 is currently available in 31 sizes, from 255/50R19 107V to a highly laudable 175/70R13 82T to keep even entry-level hatchback drivers in play. Three 14-inch sizes are also available.

Marketing the HS439

Although the Falken brand is well known in the tuner and drift community for their UHP low-profile fitments, the Eurowinter HS439 is clearly moving into the market segment that drives high-performance sedans and coupes, but without hard-core involvement in the tuning or motor-sports scene. By expanding into the more profitable end of the broadline market, Falken may seem to be taking a risk in a soft economy, but you wouldn’t know that speaking with the firm’s management team. When asked about possible cutbacks in marketing activity in 2009, Falken President and CEO Richard Smallwood said simply, “We’re doing the opposite. We’ve increased marketing activity by over 30 per cent … in a recession. The best thing to do in this economy is to be aggressive. We’re doing more advertising and sponsorship than ever before.” The aggressive stance also extends to product development and the supply chain with a 20 per cent increase in Falken’s staffing and a new warehouse, putting Falken on track to move from a 31 per cent SKU coverage to over 60 per cent by the middle of 2010. With multiple winter product offerings in Europe, expect Falken to expand their coverage of the segment going forward. The firm is taking orders now for the Eurowinter HS439 for the Fall 2009 season.