Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive vs Toyo Celsius CUV tires

What’s the deal with all-weather tires, anyway? All-weather tires constitute a fairly new category in the tire world, filling a role where all-season tires often aren’t quite up to the job. Anyone who’s tried to safely navigate when there’s 3-4 inches of snow on the roads knows that most all-season tires are not going to be able to deliver the kind of traction, braking, and control you need (in most cases), so all-weather tires are designed for enhanced winter traction with redesigned tread formulations, more aggressive tread patterns, optimized sipe networks, and other features that provide more consistent traction in snow and slush. In other words, they’re tires that fill a niche between all-season tires and winter tires, without the headache of having to remove winter tires and store them once temperatures get above 40-45 degrees F.

Are you familiar with SimpleScore? SimpleScore is the system that the SimpleTire team has developed to give you a quick at-a-glance idea of a tire’s capabilities and performance. We look at the tire’s spec sheet, reviews, manufacturer information, and other data points, then take that and distill it down to a 1-10 score for the categories of traction, handling, and longevity, as well as an overall average SimpleScore for each tire. For the Pirelli Cinturato WeatherActive] and Toyo Celsius CUV, the SimpleScore numbers shake out as follows:

Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive

• Traction: 9.8
• Handling: 9.6
• Longevity: 9.2
• Overall average SimpleScore: 9.5

Toyo Celsius CUV

• Traction: 8.5
• Handling: 8.6
• Longevity: 8.9
• Overall average SimpleScore: 8.6

As you can see, the Pirelli and the Toyo both have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, and both come in at distinctly different price points (which we’ll touch on in a bit). But the SimpleScore is the 30,000-foot view that doesn’t tell the whole story, so let’s get into it in a bit more depth in this product comparison.

Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive tires

Over the decades, the Pirelli brand has been synonymous with quality and performance. The Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive is one of the more recent additions to their product line and falls into a whole new-ish category of tires: the all-weather tire. All-weather tires are pretty similar to all-season tires but are designed to surpass their performance, particularly when it comes to winter traction, without an appreciable trade-off in tread life, ride quality, road manners, noise level, handling, cornering, and braking. Sure enough, the Scorpion WeatherActive has the tire industry’s Three Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service. Where the rubber meets the road, the Scorpion WeatherActive features a directional tread pattern with a 3-rib design that’s rigid to resist tread squirm, angled grooves that channel away water and slush to fight hydroplaning, a zigzag central groove, and low road noise thanks to a tread pitch that’s randomized and computer tuned to cancel certain frequencies and resonances. The tread compound of the Scorpion WeatherActive is engineered to stay flexible and deliver good traction when temperatures are near or below freezing point, but it is still durable enough for long treadwear. Pirelli backs the Scorpion WeatherActive with a 60,000 mile limited manufacturer tread life warranty. Total it all up and you get SimpleScores of 9.8 for traction, 9.2 for longevity, and 9.5 for handling – all pretty admirable, if you ask us.

Toyo Celsius CUV tires

When the Toyo design team took on the Celsius CUV all-weather tire, they definitely did their homework on winter traction and performance. The Celsius CUV features a tread compound that’s optimized to stay flexible for confident grip at subfreezing temperatures, molded into an asymmetric all-weather tread pattern with specially designed slush grooves that evacuate water, snow, and slush from the tire’s contact patch. Snow claws improve traction and increase rigidity across tread blocks for better traction, handling, and braking performance on snow or ice. The innovative network of sipes in the Celsius CUV features a higher density towards the tread’s center blocks for a tenacious grip on snow and slush and a sparser density towards the shoulder for enhanced handling and stability. The asymmetric design also makes it easy to cross-rotate tires to equalize wear patterns. Toyo’s tests show a distinct advantage in handling and braking distances compared to the competitors’ tires; the Toyo Celsius CUV is covered by a 60,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty.

Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive vs Toyo Celsius CUV tires on traction

So how do the Pirelli and the Toyo stack up against each other when it comes to traction? Even though the Toyo has an admirable suite of features for dependable, confident grip in winter conditions, it comes in with a SimpleScore of 8.5 in that category vs. a hard-to-beat 9.8 for the Pirelli. Why the big disparity between the two? Reviews point to the directional tread pattern of the Pirelli doing a better job of evacuating water and slush from the tire’s contact patch, and its network of sipes enhances winter traction along with a 3-rib tread design that keeps the Pirelli rigid for dependable grip and great stability at highway speed. The Toyo Celsius CUV and Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive are both 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake certified for severe winter service, but our decision is:

ADVANTAGE: Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive

Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive vs Toyo Celsius CUV tires on handling

In the handling category, again the rivalry is not even close – with the Toyo registering a SimpleScore of 8.6 vs a very solid 9.6 for the Pirelli. It’s probably important to remember here that Pirelli has decades of experience in the motorsports world, a proving ground where tire designs are developed and design details will eventually make their way into other tires in the company’s lineup. The rigidity and integrity of a tire’s tread face are very important because as you round a corner, momentum tries to keep the vehicle moving forward and a softer, mushier tire will distort its tread and cause “tread squirm,” with part of the tread sometimes even losing contact with the road surface. The Scorpion WeatherActive’s casing and tread design keep the tread face rigid and planted to the pavement for handling that’s more confident and decisive, compared to the Toyo, and it makes a big difference in steering response, cornering ability, and overall road manners. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive

Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive vs Toyo Celsius CUV tires on longevity

When it comes to longevity, the limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty usually tells the entire story – usually, but not always. This is a bit of a conundrum, in the case of the Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive vs. Toyo Celsius CUV. The Toyo and the Pirelli both weigh in with 60,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranties, but the Pirelli nets a SimpleScore of 9.2 for longevity vs. 8.9 for the Toyo. In instances like this, we generally defer to customer reviews, and reviews point to Pirelli’s tread design and tread compound delivering better wear properties and longer service vs. the Toyo. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive

When to use each

When it comes to consistent, confident traction year-round, the Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive and Toyo Celsius CUV are both excellent choices in all-weather tires. Both are 3PMSF rated for winter traction, both perform well year-round and both have generous manufacturer’s tread life coverage. As we noted from the start, all-weather tires are a good choice when you have to deal with difficult winter weather but you really don’t want the headaches that go with specialized winter tires. Winter tires use a softer tread compound that stays flexible for grip at subfreezing temperatures (think the traction of a rubber boot vs. a hard-rubber hockey puck), but that tread compound wears quickly on warmer days. When temperatures get above 40-45 degrees, tire manufacturers recommend swapping your winters for all-season tires again - leaving you with the headache of dismounting them and finding a place to store them for the next nine months until winter comes around again. All-season tires are a great way around that; if that sounds like your situation, you can’t go wrong with either the Pirelli or the Toyo.

Which one should you choose?

This is where this particular comparison gets tricky. Yes, the Scorpion WeatherActive is clearly out in front of the Toyo Celsius CUV in all the pertinent SimpleScore categories, with a big gap between their ratings and performance (although the two tires are on an even footing in the longevity category). They even come in at almost the same starting price, with the Pirelli at $208.55 per tire vs. $223.32 per tire for the Toyo. With the starting price taken into account, it’s pretty clear that Pirelli offers better performance and value all the way around. That’s not to say that the Toyo isn’t a great tire – it is, but it’s our opinion that the Pirelli Scorpion WeatherActive is the favorite in this head-to-head comparison.

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