Every tyre sold new carries a label with three grades on it. Wet grip runs from A down to E, rolling resistance runs from A down to E, and the third figure is the noise the tyre makes in decibels. Rolling resistance is the one nobody reads, because it is the grade that shows up in your fuel.
The mechanism is simple enough. A rolling tyre is constantly being squashed flat at the bottom and springing back, and that flexing turns a little of your fuel into heat instead of motion. A soft, grippy compound loses more of it than a hard, low-drag one. The whole span from the best grade to the worst is worth a few percent of what you burn, which is real money over a set and still smaller than people expect.
So treat it as a tie-break rather than a deciding factor. Wet grip is the grade that changes a stopping distance, and a stopping distance is worth more than a tankful. Choose the wet grip first, then take the better rolling resistance among what is left.
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Wimbledon Hill Road and the run down towards the Broadway are stop-start work, climbing one way and braking the other, and neither is where a low rolling resistance grade earns much back. What does earn its keep on that sort of road is wet grip on a gradient, and that is the grade worth weighing when we go through the options on your drive.
A driver off Kingston Road was choosing between two mid-range tyres in the same size. One was a grade better on fuel and the other a grade better in the wet. For a car doing short congested journeys we pointed at the wet one.
A car used mainly between Raynes Park and the Broadway covers little distance and spends much of it stationary. Rolling resistance only saves fuel while the tyre is rolling, so the grade matters far less there than on a car doing long runs.
A driver in Wimbledon Village wanted the quietest option rather than the cheapest to run. That is a perfectly legitimate way to choose. The decibel figure is the one people ignore until they have lived with a loud tyre through a winter.
Less than the marketing suggests and more than nothing. Across the full span of grades you are looking at a few percent of consumption, so on high mileage it adds up over a set, and on short local journeys it barely registers.
Wet grip, every time, if you have to choose. The gap between top and bottom grades in the wet is measured in car lengths under braking. The fuel difference is a slow trickle you never notice.
No, and that is the label's biggest gap. Tread life is not graded at all, and a soft, grippy compound often wears faster than a hard one. Ask what the tyre is like for mileage as well.
Yes, within the same size and load rating, since they are measured to a common test. What they do not capture is how the tyre feels, how it behaves at the limit or how quickly it wears.
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