Cooper Endeavor Plus vs CS5 Grand Touring

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CS5 Grand Touring despite its name, is actually a standard touring tire.

Cooper Endeavor Plus on Outlander
Cooper Endeavor Plus on Mitsubishi Outlander.

Main Takeaway

So overall, the Cooper Endeavor Plus excels in:

  • Enhanced wet grip with a softer tread and efficient sipes.
  • Improved winter traction with flexible rubber and snow-friendly tread.
  • Smoother ride due to softer construction and deeper tread.
  • Better hydroplaning resistance with more effective water channeling.

Review this tire in greater details: https://tiredriver.com/cooper-endeavor-plus-review/

Whereas the CS5 Grand Touring excels in:

  • Superior dry performance with solid construction and lighter weight.
  • Quieter ride with advanced noise reduction features.
  • Greater stability and responsiveness during maneuvers.
  • Longer tread life and improved fuel economy due to durable design and materials.

Sizes Specs

SpecificationCooper Endeavor PlusCooper CS5 Grand Touring
Rim Sizes16 to 22 inches15 to 18 inches
Speed RatingsT, H, VT only
Load RatingsSL, XLSL only
Tread Depth Range10.5 to 12.5/32″11 to 11.5/32″
Weight Range22 to 42 lbs20 to 32 lbs
Tread Warranty65k miles80k miles
UTQG Rating680 AA780 AA
Winter RatingsM+S (no 3PMSF)M+S (no 3PMSF)

Wet Performance

Wet traction is significantly influenced by the presence and functionality of sipes on a tire’s tread.

These slits, though may seem in-significant, play a crucial role. They basically suck up water particles in, left out by the grooves, and later spray them out, as the tire rolls over, effectively creating a drier contact patch for the tread rubber to grip the road.

And their effectiveness highly depends on how flexible they are.

That’s why here, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring, despite featuring interlocking sipes designed to enhance control, falls short, with its harder rubber compound.

This stiffer material hinders the sipes’ ability to effectively absorb and expel water, diminishing the tire’s overall wet traction.

In contrast, the Cooper Endeavor Plus benefits from a softer overall tread, allowing its sipes to flex more freely and manage water more efficiently.

    Cooper Endeavor Plus
    Cooper Endeavor Plus

Additionally, its design includes more voids, enhancing resistance to hydroplaning by more effectively channeling water through the tire’s grooves.

This design reduces the reliance on sipes alone, contributing to superior overall wet performance.

Whereas the CS5 Touring’s continuous longitudinal ribs, lacking lateral voids, impede effective water dispersion, especially sideways. This limitation means the tire can’t clear water as efficiently, further compromising its overall wet performance.

Dry Performance

When you’re looking into how well a tire performs on dry roads, it’s all about the grip and how quickly it responds to steering. It’s a good idea to break it down and look at each aspect separately.

Linear Grip

What we call “linear grip” is just how well a tire sticks to the road when you’re going straight, like when you’re driving on a freeway. It’s basically about how well a tire can brake and keep stable in one direction.

And here, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring stands out for its superior braking efficiency, demonstrated through its 2 feet shorter braking distances in tests, (on average, stopping from 60 mph).

Cooper CS5 Grand Touring
Cooper CS5 Grand Touring

This is mostly thanks to its solid central ribs and a strong base. This setup gives you a more stable and responsive ride. The tread pattern also plays a part, with lugs sitting on a second layer of rubber for extra stickiness.

Additionally, the tire’s lighter construction contributes to its effectiveness, further.

Why? Well because reduced weight means less momentum inertia, enabling the tire to slow down quicker, improving longitudinal traction.

Overall Handling

In the realm of cornering, there are three critical phases:

  • Entry Phase: This is when the vehicle prepares to navigate the turn, typically involving braking and possibly downshifting.
  • Mid-Cornering: This is a critical point where you need your steering to be spot on so you can keep control.
  • Exit Phase: This is when you’re coming out of the turn and starting to speed-up/accelerate again.

The Cooper CS5 Grand Touring shines throughout these stages, providing unparalleled steering precision.

Thanks to its superior braking, as previously mentioned, it approaches corners with greater speed. Additionally, it delivers a distinct sensation of grip mid-corner, enhancing the driver’s control and confidence.

Its weighty steering, compared to others, also offers an improved on-center feel, making it exceptionally adept during the exit phase.

On the flip side, the Cooper Endeavor Plus, while it has a similar grip in corners (saying this by calculating comparative lateral g forces), doesn’t give you that sporty feel the CS5 does.

And the reason is again its heavier weight, which slows its steering response down a bit, making it a full second slower over a lap.

This increased weight exerts more pressure on the tire lugs, causing them to bend more. Such deformation leads to a compromised balance in under/oversteering, which ultimately affects how the car handles and performs.

Pro tip: Ensure a wise choice by visiting my AS tire page for essential all-season tire recommendations.

Winter Traction

All-season tires are often valued for their decent performance in winter conditions, providing essential control in steering, as well as during aggressive braking and acceleration on both snow and ice.

However, when putting these tires here to the test, there’s a noticeable deficiency in overall performance, particularly in steering responsiveness on ice.

Though among these Cooper tires, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring falls shorter, showcasing lower winter performance on almost all of my comparative tests.

The primary issue with this tire lies in its relatively rigid rubber composition, which becomes more pronounced in colder temperatures, diminishing the tire’s ability to grip, or “bite,” effectively.

It basically hardens up further, failing to adapt thermally, reducing the tire’s efficiency in snowy and icy terrains.

Conversely, the Cooper Endeavor Plus fares better due to its softer rubber compound, which enhances maneuverability in all sorts of mild winter conditions.

Its central ribs, basically, feature a lot more biters, in form on in-groove notches, ensuring superior snow-to-snow contact. This type of contact is crucial, as snow tends to stick better to itself than to rubber, enhancing grip.

Ride Quality

Two important components determine ride quality:

  • The noise produced by the tire tread.
  • And the tire’s effectiveness in mitigating road defects.

Let’s take a look at both of these.

Noise Reduction

In evaluating tire noise, it’s crucial to recognize that it primarily stems from the collision of air with the tread walls, predominantly entering/exiting the tire through the shoulder voids.

Now, out of both tires, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring addresses this issue a lot more effectively.

It basically incorporates connectors or ridges between its shoulder lugs, significantly diminishing the volume of air that penetrates the tread.

Additionally, the tire employs advanced pitch technology which ensures that air particles striking various areas of the tread produce different tones, preventing any single tone from being amplified.

The result is a more muted and varied sound profile, which contributes to a quieter ride. I talked about it more here: Are All-Season Tires Comfortable and Quiet Enough?

On the other hand, the Cooper Endeavor Plus, with its more open structure and greater tread depth, is inherently noisier.

Though the tire also features Whisper Grooves, designed to mitigate air entry, its more spacious design simply has more area for air particles to bump around.

Consequently, this leads to a relatively louder noise output, (as indicated by its greater decibel readings on tests).

Impact Comfort

In considering on-road comfort, two primary factors come into play: the tire’s ability to smooth out road imperfections and its stability during maneuvering.

For overall stability, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring excels, with its design and construction that contributes to a more responsive driving experience, making it the superior choice for those prioritizing control.

However, when it comes to “absorbing” bumps, the Cooper Endeavor Plus takes the lead, where its superior performance in this area is attributed to two main factors.

Firstly, it has a softer construction, which naturally allows it to absorb shocks and bumps more effectively, leading to a smoother ride. Secondly, it comes with a greater tread depth, reaching up to 12.5/32″.

This additional rubber provides a buffer against road imperfections, allowing more space for them to be absorbed before they can affect the vehicle’s cabin.

Treadwear and Fuel Economy

Tread longevity is a vital aspect of tire performance, primarily governed by two factors: the rate of rubber degradation and the time taken for the tread to wear down to 2/32″ (legal tread depth limit in US).

Now, here, the Cooper CS5 Grand Touring is taking the lead, which is not a surprise, given that its a standard touring tire, focusing a lot more on longevity and fuel economy than traction.

The tire benefits from its relatively lighter weight and a continuous lug/rib design supported by a secondary layer of rubber.

These features collectively reduce the pressure and heat experienced by the tire when in contact with the road, consequently slowing down wear.

Additionally, its harder rubber composition, enriched with wear-resistant polymers, further prolongs its lifespan. So it makes sense why the tire comes with a 80,000-mile warranty, reflecting its tread durability.

Same is the case in terms of fuel economy, where the CS5 tire offers lower average rolling resistance in comparison, again thanks to its lighter construction, and relatively shallower tread depth.

Basically these features keep the lugs from bending too much, not wasting energy in the form of reshaping of the tread and heat.

To Conclude

Both tires present a trade-off between performance, comfort, and longevity, and so the best option depends on your specific needs.

The CS5 Grand Touring excels in dry performance with superior braking and handling due to its solid structure and lighter weight, yet falls short in wet conditions and winter traction because of its rigid rubber and ineffective water dispersion.

Meanwhile, the Endeavor Plus shines in adverse weather with better flexibility and water management, providing a safer and more reliable grip in wet and snowy conditions.

Though the tire lacks to CS5 in terms of fuel economy and tread life.

Other than this, the CS5 also offers a quieter ride, while its counterpart takes the lead in terms of impact comfort performance, making it a relatively less economical long-term choice, in comparison.

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