Continental TrueContact Tour 54 vs Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack tires

For most drivers of sedans, coupes, minivans, and crossovers, all-season tires make the most sense as a versatile jack-of-all-trades solution for daily driver duty. All-season tires deliver dependable grip year-round along with smooth road manners, an accommodating ride, capable handling and cornering, low noise, and good wear properties with a generous limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty. For all those reasons, all-season tires make up 84 percent of passenger tire sales, but then there are their cousins, Grand Touring tires. Grand Touring tires are designed to check all the boxes and meet all the expectations you’d have for all-season tires but with more of an emphasis on low noise and refined ride quality. That’s why Grand Touring tires are chosen as OEM for many luxury vehicles, and premium Grand Touring tires are developed in collaboration with automakers around the weight, power, torque, center of gravity, and overall driving dynamics of those vehicles.

Today we’re going to do a head-to-head comparison of two premium Grand Touring tires, the TrueContact Tour 54 from Continental and the Turanza QuietTrack from Bridgestone. The Bridgestone and the [Continental](https://simpletire.com/brands/continental-tires both come from top manufacturers, and both are loaded with the kind of innovations, top-quality features, and performance that drivers of premium vehicles are looking for. In the course of this product comparison, you’ll see us make reference to the SimpleScore rankings for each tire. If you’re not familiar with SimpleScore yet, that’s the rating method that our team developed to give you a quick, at-a-glance idea of a tire’s strengths and weaknesses. We look at the tire’s technical details, specs, manufacturer information, customer reviews, and other data points, then process that information into a 1-10 numerical score for the categories of traction, handling, and longevity as well as an overall average SimpleScore for each tire. For the Continental TrueContact Tour 54 and Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack, the SimpleScore numbers look like this:

Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack:

• Traction: 9.7
• Handling: 9.5
• Longevity: 9.8
• Overall average SimpleScore: 9.6

Continental TrueContact Tour 54:

• Traction: 8.4
• Handling: 8.6
• Longevity: 9.9
• Overall average SimpleScore: 8.9

As handy as SimpleScore is, it doesn’t really take you into the details of what a tire can offer, like a technical overview of features and what makes a tire a great value and a great performer. Let’s go in and get a closer look with this comparison review of the Continental TrueContact Tour 54 and Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack:

Continental TrueContact Tour 54 tires

With the Continental TrueContact Tour 54, Continental has built on the proven success of the PureContact LS and TrueContact Tour, taking some of the best design details of those two tires, then updating and refining them for the latest generation of sedans, coupes, minivans and crossovers. The TrueContact Tour 54 starts out with Continental’s EcoPlus technology package, a combination of tread formulation, tread design, and internal construction that lowers rolling resistance and friction to realize substantial fuel savings over the life of the tire.

The TrueContact Tour 54 delivers consistent grip year-round with three wide circumferential grooves that work as a system with angled grooves, lateral grooves, and a dense network of sipes to resist hydroplaning by diverting water through and behind the tire’s contact patch on wet roads. For predictable, crisp handling and cornering, the shoulder blocks of the TrueContact Tour 54 are reinforced to add more rigidity to the tread face, resisting tread squirm and deformation during fast maneuvers. Road noise is kept to a minimum, with the tread pitch of the Continental randomized and computer-tuned to cancel certain frequencies and harmonics for a quiet and serene ride on the highway.

Like with other tires in the Continental family, the TrueContact 54 has wear indicators molded into the tread, with the letters D, W, and S. When all three letters are visible, the tire has enough tread depth for dependable grip in dry, wet, or snowy conditions. When the S indicator wears down, the tire is suitable for dry or wet pavement, and when the W is no longer visible, the tire is only safe for driving on dry pavement.

The internal construction of the Continental is optimized for the extra weight of electric vehicles and hybrids, with reduced rolling resistance that enables a driver to get the most out of their EV’s range and battery life. The upshot of all these upgrades is up to 18% better tread life, 6% better wet-road braking, and 5% better dry-road handling as compared to the previous TrueContact Tour. That excellent SimpleScore for longevity can be chalked up in part to the Continental’s warranty: the TrueContact Tour 54 is covered from the factory by an 80,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty.

Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack tires

Next up we have the Turanza QuietTrack from Bridgestone. The Turanza QuietTrack is the tire of choice as factory original equipment for several models of luxury cars and crossovers. If you’re the kind of driver who puts a high priority on a refined ride, low noise, and good tread wear properties as well as year-round performance, this could well be the kind of tire that meets all those expectations for you.

Bridgestone designed the Turanza QuietTrack for longevity; its durable internal construction and advanced, long-wearing tread compound help to ensure stability and many miles of service. Internal design details of the Turanza QuietTrack include a polyester casing with steel belts and a nylon cap overlay. Bridgestone covers the Turanza QuietTrack with a best-in-class 80,000 mile limited manufacturer tread life warranty. The Bridgestone delivers dependable all-season traction and resistance to hydroplaning, thanks to a system of open shoulder slots, 3D sipes, and a network of circumferential and lateral grooves.

Drivers love the great road manners, driver feedback, responsive handling, and precise cornering of the Turanza QuietTrack, all thanks to its tread technology, stiff shoulder, and sidewall. Maybe one of the best features of the Turanza QuietTrack, though, is its great noise mitigation. It’s designed to break up and eliminate resonances and road noise with non-chamfered grooves, an optimized tread pitch, and in-groove ridges adding up to a driving experience that’s surprisingly peaceful and quiet.

Continental TrueContact Tour 54 vs Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack tires on traction

When it comes to the traction category, the Bridgestone is pretty hard to beat with a SimpleScore of 9.7 vs 8.4 for the Continental. Neither tire has the Three Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service, so to be honest we probably wouldn’t count on either one to perform well in heavier snow, slush, and ice. The Bridgestone, though, is designed with in-groove ridges that work with its shoulder slots and circumferential grooves for dependable grip in wet or light wintry conditions, and its strategically placed network of sipes multiplies grip and surface area with hundreds of extra biting edges that chew through light snow and slush. Granted, the Continental has a lot of common ground when it comes to tread design and features, but customer reviews point to the Bridgestone having an edge when it comes to year-round grip. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack

Continental TrueContact Tour 54 vs Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack tires on handling

As legacy brands, Continental and Bridgestone have both built reputations for performance-oriented tires that deliver sharp, crisp handling and great steering response. In the handling category with these two tires, though, it’s not even close with the Bridgestone weighing in with a SimpleScore of 9.5 vs 8.6 for the Continental. One of the key differences between the Bridgestone and the Continental in terms of tread design, though, is the continuous center rib in the Bridgestone’s tread.

A solid center rib tends to give a tire good road manners and nice, secure straight-line stability as well as helping to enhance steering response for a quick, light, direct feel. The large, reinforced shoulder blocks of the Bridgestone also help to reduce tread squirm; as a vehicle enters a corner, momentum tries to keep it moving forward, which puts a lot of stress on the tires and tread. The weight and inertia can cause the tread to deform (“tread squirm”) with the tread’s inboard side even leaving the pavement a little. Reducing tread squirming and enhancing tread rigidity is important, and the Bridgestone’s combination of sipes, grooves, shoulder design, and internal construction gives it that rigidity for crisp cornering ability. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack

Continental TrueContact Tour 54 vs Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack tires on longevity

This one’s a squeaker, with the Continental showing a SimpleScore of 9.9 vs 9.8 for the Bridgestone. Both tires have identical limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty coverage of 80,000 miles, which is just about best-in-class for a Grand Touring tire. When things are this close and the two tires compare that well with each other when it comes to warranty coverage, that’s when we defer to customer reviews and the reviews give a slight (ever so slight) leg up to the Continental here. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Continental TrueContact Tour 54

When to use each

The Continental and the Bridgestone are both very capable tires when it comes to year-round traction and solid handling properties, but both tires really excel in their refined ride quality and low noise. Engineers from both the Continental and Bridgestone noise/vibration/harshness teams put a lot of resources into both tires, and their hard work paid off with tires that easily soak up pavement irregularities and isolate road noise for a luxuriously refined and quiet ride. They are both great choices for drivers of high-end sedans and crossovers who are looking for ride quality, long tread wear, year-round performance in every kind of condition other than heavy snow, and handling that’s accurate and predictable.

Which one should you choose?

Let’s look at the prices of the two tires: the Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack comes in with a starting list price of $180.99 per tire vs a starting list price of $131.99 per tire for the Continental TrueContact 54. We’ll readily admit that there’s a pretty big disparity between the SimpleScore ratings of the two tires, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Continental is the inferior tire of the two. Both tires are very good at what they do, which is delivering a quiet and forgiving ride along with extraordinary tread life warranty coverage, solid handling and road manners, and dependable performance in wet, dry, or wintry conditions. We’d break it down this way: if you can afford the Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack, then that’s the tire you should go with. If you want to save almost $50 per tire (well over $200 for the whole set of tires, depending on your tire size), then opt for the Continental TrueContact Tour 54. Here at the SimpleTire team, both the Continental and the Bridgestone have made a pretty favorable impression on us and we’re pretty sure you can’t go wrong and won’t be disappointed with either choice.

Still not sure which tire to buy? Fortunately, SimpleTire is here to help as our helpful agents are more than happy to assist you in selecting the right tire for your ride and budget.