By Daryl Lee in Bangkok, Thailand

WHILE SPEAKING WITH local representatives from the Bridgestone offices here, it seems local buyers have a continuing fixation with tyre noise or more accurately, searching for ways to eliminate it.

It was with that in mind that Bridgestone launched its flagship touring tyre the Turanza GR-90 at its new tyre proving grounds in Thailand and is optimised for executive sedans like the Toyota Camry or Mercedes-Benz E-class.

Bridgestone has two main product lines, Potenza and Turanza with the former a grip-optimised performance tyre range and the latter geared towards touring, that is, optimised for noise reduction and comfort.

Viewed simplistically, tyres are either performance or comfort-oriented, and are usually mutually exclusive. The Turanza GR-90 aims to change that impression by claiming to provide an exceptionally comfortable, quiet tyre with good levels of grip in the dry and wet.

We were taken to Bridgestone’s new proving grounds near its Nong Khae factory to experience this first-hand and comparing it to the tyre it supersedes, the Turanza GR-80.

The proving grounds cover a massive land area of 526,194 square metres, or about the size of 126 football fields.

Tyre proving grounds are microcosms of all the world’s roads and include water sprinklers to emulate wet road conditions in order to mimic as much real world conditions as humanly possible in one location.

To achieve the fabled middle ground of comfort and performance, the Turanza GR-90 boasts an asymmetric tread pattern, superior wet performance and more importantly, an asymmetric sidewall construction to improve linear stability along with improved turn-in.

Tyres which have asymmetric tread patterns, that is in relation to its inner and outer halves generally allow a tyre’s characteristics to be optimised for differing road conditions, for instance a performance tyre’s semi-slick outer shoulders to provide maximum contact with the road while the vehicle is turning.

In the case of the Turanza GR-90, the tread of its two centre blocks were specifically designed to reduce road noise, consequently transmitting less noise into the cabin.

During our ride with a Bridgestone test driver on the wet handling circuit, the Turanza GR-90 showed excellent wet weather stability and traction with hardly any signs of aquaplaning.

When CarBuyer took it through the slalom and compared it with its GR-80 predecessor, the new tyre was quieter, with much sharper turn-in and resistance to sidewall flex during hard directional changes.

CarBuyer also spoke to a few (typically-inscrutable) Japanese engineers from Bridgestone, who went on enthusiastically about the GR-90’s capabilities. But when we asked if the asymmetric sidewall construction would be seen on a future Potenza tyre, we only got a wry smile and a “maybe” as an answer. Their engineers may be inscrutable but their products were very scrutable and insofar as we could tell, commendable.

The Turanza GR-90 will be available in the first months of 2010 with sizes ranging from 14 to 19-inches. Prices were yet unavailable at press time.