Continental passes Dullsville by

I've been a motoring journalist for a decade and a half, but never went to a tyre launch before. And what can you expect but Dullsville when they want to show you a product which most of us don't think about for 30,000 miles, and then in a negative manner because replacement is going to cost us.

Wrong. Oh boy, how wrong. Dullsville is somewhere else, certainly not Barcelona in Spain for the launch of the new ContiSportContact2, the latest offering from the Continental tyre giant.

And I realised that it is only at a tyre launch that motorhacks like me can get the chance to try out some of the most exotic cars in the world, under conditions which those who can afford to buy them can probably only dream about.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Tyres, however high-tech they are, don't go anywhere without cars. And high-performance tyres, which is what the ContiSportContact2 is, require high-performance cars to show them off.

So we had souped-up Mercs and Beemers, Porsches of all current persuasions, high-end Fords and Peugeots, Audi quattros, Alfa 156s, Jaguar XK8s and a lot of other dream machines to play with. On a playground suited to the situation - the Circuit de Catalunya racing track in Barcelona.

We could drive the circuit as hard as we liked (have to admit this took yours truly some time to decide to do), try to slide around a special wet-surface course (not easy to slide on these new tyres), or take a trip out through the Catalan countryside (which I did in an XK8 soft-top while hearing about miserable weather at home. Smiling smugly, of course).

Yep, a lot more fun than I had expected. But what's this new tyre all about, and what can you do to make a tyre better anyway?

Well, the ContiSportContact2 is, as we might expect, a new version of the ContiSportContact high performance tyre first launched in 1996 and of which 6.5 million have been sold since. Some 4.2 million of these were original equipment (OE) on the world's major car brands.

Tyres are for kicking, as far as most motorists are concerned. But if you drive a high-performance car, you tend to be a bit more concerned about what's connecting you to the road. (And in this case, 'high performance' means anything with an engine of 120bhp and over, which takes in all your 2-litre Primeras and Mondeos and Lagunas and stuff, not just Porsches and tweaked Mercs.)

And at this level, if you get OE approval, it's likely enough that when it comes to replacing your rubber, you'll go with what came with the car. This is when tyre companies actually show a profit.

As it happens, there's a growing demand for high speed-capable tyres in most motoring markets, not least in Ireland. Globally, the growth in this segment is expected to almost triple between 1997-2005. In Ireland, just about 4% of tyres sold were in this segment in 1997, but this is increasing at a similar rate to the global trend and is expected to be 17% of total tyres sold here by 2005.

Cars at all levels are more powerful than they used to be. They're also driven in more extreme conditions, and expected to deal with a wider variety of driving situations than before, not to mention having a host of electronic gizmos that allow all that to happen without the driver even being aware of it.

To improve their product in line with all this, Continental looked at the ContiSportContact's mix of compound ingredients, tread design, and distortion characteristics under braking and acceleration.

They talked to us about 'bionics' in tyre design, basically here managing to make the tyre footprint become wider during braking, thus putting more rubber on the road when it is actually needed (and remember, all that's sticking your metal to the road are four patches each roughly with the surface area of a postcard).

They talked of 'spiders web' technology in the compound design, which mixes 'flexible' and 'firm' characteristics in the makeup of the material. Given that any tyre has to deal with both wet and dry conditions, all that's important too.

Then there's the tread design, which many of us just want to look good. The ContiSportContact2's asymmetrical design has its reasons for every element: stiff 'shoulder' grooves to minimise the possibility of aquaplaning while cornering, deep circumferential grooves to pick up and disperse water, and a ribbed basic pattern that doesn't distort under hard acceleration, thus making sure that as much of the engine's power as possible is usable for acceleration.

Of course, we can't see any of this except under test rig conditions. And they showed us some of the improvements in the new tyre using computer-snapped instant photographs of the old and new tyres' profiles under pressure.

They were impressive even to non-technicians like most of us.

So too were the actual performances of the tyres under the pressure which a number of the colleagues subjected them to at Circuit de Catalunya (the afternoon passed against a constant background of tyres squealing under extreme stress). I was particularly impressed with the wet-test circuit performance, which of course is very important here in our rain-misted isle of Ireland.

So too, apparently, are Audi, Ford, Mercedes, Porsche and VW, who have already given OE approvals for the new tyre for a number of current and upcoming models. The previous version (which will continue in production until at least 2003) was also approved for OE by Alfa Romeo, BMW, Jaguar, Nissan, Peugeot, Renault, SEAT, Volvo, Opel and Rover, and no doubt most of these will also eventually embrace the ContiSportContact2.

And hey, if you're in the situation of changing your own tyres, the latest version won't cost you any more than the current one.

So you can put your foot down without stepping painfully on your wallet.

And remember, you're never likely to put your rubber under as much pressure as I experienced it in Barcelona. So feel good. And feel safe.

But drive carefully just the same. It's only four postcards, after all. And Continental really DO want you to be able to send REAL postcards home for a lot of years yet.