General Grabber HTS60 Review

The General Grabber HTS60 is an aggressive highway terrain all season tire, which blends endurance with premium comfort and performance. It’s notable features include, comfort, and tread life. Let’s see what else it has for you.

The General Grabber HTS60 performs well on dry and snowy surfaces but has notable deficiencies in ice traction and steering response. Its robust and durable construction promises extended tread life and remarkable comfort and noise reduction, but this very feature also compromises its fuel efficiency and precision in wet handling.

Specification and Size Variants

The General Grabber HTS60 comes in 15 to 22 inches rims, and they have the following specs.

• Speed ratings: S, T and H.
• Load ratings: SL, XL and E only.
• Tread depth: 10 to 14/32″.
• Weight range: 28 to 55 lbs.
• Treadwear warranty: 65k for S and T rated, while 50k for H (speed) rated sizes.
• UTQG rating: 680 A B.

Note to Readers: Lost in the maze of all-season tires? I’ve mapped out a path for you here: https://tiredriver.com/all-season-tires/

Tread Design

The Grabber HTS60 comes with a symmetric tread pattern, where 5 ribs can be seen.

The middle most ribs is continuous running, forming consistent rubber to road contact, resulting in dry grip, while with wave-like siping, it also provide you with the needed wet directional grip too.

The outer (central) ribs are the most spacious part of the tire, characterized by blocks having longitudinal notches and a mixture of multi-directional siping.

While the shoulder lugs on the other side comes with the most packed up structure.

They although have prominent lateral grooves in between, the are still connected to each other by another additional rib running next to them.

And while those shoulder blocks have interlocking sipes, these adjacent ribs (joining them), have lateral notches and rectilinear siping.

Internally, the tire comes with a 2 ply polyester casing, with 2 steel belts, and 2 ply spirally wound nylon cap plies.

Moreover, there’s also another layer above those cap plies, which is basically dedicated to soaking up the road bumps.

Compare Grabber HTS60 With:

• Firestone Destination LE3
• Kumho Crugen HT51

Winter Performance

If you are seeking an all-season tire proficient in snow performance, you should know that the General Grabber HTS60 is a strong contender here, (I mean in the highway terrain category).

It exhibits superior snow braking and handling traction, attributed to its central rib with offset edges and adjacent ribs fitted with multi-directional biters.

These basically form effective snow to snow contact, allowing for an enhanced steering response, leading to more consistent lap performance, a quality mostly missing in its peers, (as they tend to struggle with a good enough oversteer\understeer balance).

But still you should know that, despite even having numerous wavelike interlocking sipes across the tread, the HTS60 substantially lacks ice traction, as demonstrated by ice braking tests.

To give you an idea, compared to its winter dedicated family member, the General Grabber Arctic, it lacks in braking by over 8 feet.

And so it makes sense that there’s no 3 peak mountain snowflake rating seen here, though it does come with M+S.

Tread Life

With the HTS60 coming in with more durable Kevlar compounds in its composition, it not only now offers 25% more tread life, compared to its predecessor, the Grabber HTS, but also takes the lead among its direct competitors.

Thanks to its cut-resistant rubber, fortified with DuraGen Technology, and an impressive tread depth of 14/32″, the HTS60 delivers remarkable performance.

This chip-resistant rubber combats wear effectively under various conditions, including mild off-road terrains. While the substantial tread depth ensures longevity, as it takes more time to wear down to the replacement tread depth level.

And so as a result, you get a tire with 65k treadwear warranty.

Overall Dry Performance

Dry performance is two parts, grip, and steering response, where grip is further divided in to 2, directional and lateral traction.

Let me discuss all these factors one by one, to give you a better idea, of what’s going on.

Directional Grip

When evaluating a tire’s ability to maintain grip in a straight line, (or as some like to call, its longitudinal grip), the central rib (and area), of the tire is the key.

And since this grip has a directional nature, it gets measured with the tire’s acceleration and braking efficacy.

But why the middle? Well, this is primarily because this part of the tire bears the most weight and, consequently, makes the most contact with the road surface.

And in case of the General Grabber HTS60, this enhanced contact is facilitated by the tire’s broad and continuous central rib, which basically remains uninterrupted by any sort of lateral grooves, ensuring consistent contact with the road, and resulting in above average grip.

Additionally, with the rib having off-set edges, combined with the its multi-directional slits found on the adjacent ribs, the overall longitudinal traction is enhanced even further.

Though it still could have been better, if it weren’t for its more voided up outer lugs. But then again, its okay I guess, given the tire is coming under the category of aggressive highways terrains.

Lateral Grip

For cornering grip, the shoulder area of the tire is mainly responsible.

Technically, when a vehicle turns, the shoulder (and sidewall) area is compressed against the road, providing the necessary traction to navigate the turn safely.

Now the General Grabber HTS60 performs even better here (I mean compare to its directional grip).

And it makes sense looking at its compacted up shoulder lugs. These lugs although have prominent lateral voids, all lugs are connected to each other by an adjacent “continuous running” rib, creating a cohesive unit.

The continuity of this rib ensures consistent rubber-to-road contact, enhancing the tire’s overall lateral traction.

And here, the notches on the rib, along with the shoulder voids, functioning as in-groove notches, the overall lateral grip is further elevated.

This results in impressive stability and traction during lateral maneuvers, as evidenced by the measured lateral g-forces.

Steering Feedback

The General Grabber HTS60 offers just an okay steering response, but it might feel a bit slower or less sharp when turning the steering wheel, especially when compared to others in the category.

And this happens mainly because of the tire’s thicker tread (up to 14/32″) and heavier build. These make the tire have more inertia and can make it feel a bit harder to control when going around corners. The thicker tread can also affect the balance of the vehicle, making it prone to oversteering or understeering.

And yes, this also explains why the P metric sizes do better here, compared to the LT ones.

Wet Traction

In terms of overall wet traction, the General Grabber HTS60 showcases above average wet braking, and lateral traction with its combination of interlocking (wave-like) and rectilinear sipes, ensuring competitive performance.

Moreover, the multi-directional siping on the outer 2 central ribs further add to the overall longitudinal and sideways grip. And yes, same goes for the numerous notches on the outer circumferential grooves.

So why is it that it’s overall lap times (on average) aren’t so great, still, I mean compared to other highway terrain tires in its category?

Well, this is because the tire doesn’t offer a good enough over and under-steering balance.

While on these tires, one must has to be very careful and deliberate with their steering and acceleration inputs.

And so overall handling times suffer a bit.

Fuel Economy

The General Grabber HTS60 is although known for its solid and stable tread, it still has been noted for its lack of fuel efficiency.

The main contributor to this inefficiency is the tire’s excessive weight, stemming from its robust internal construction.

I mean beside having the weight of its polyester casing, and steel belts, it also bears additional weight of another/extra layer, specifically designed to absorb bumps (coming in right underneath the tread).

Moreover, its thicker rubber on top (with tread depth of up to 14/32″), isn’t helping either. And since this rubber is fortified with DuraGen Tech, characterized by its cut-resistant composition, it gets to have more density relatively.

This accumulation of weight basically puts the tire’s tread to excessive pressure, causing friction as it rubs against the road, forcing the lugs to bend.

And of course, needless to say, this does not facilitate to efficient energy conservation, as energy is being used in to deforming/re-shaping of the lugs.

Overall Ride Comfort

The comfort level experienced during a ride, is inherently linked to two pivotal elements:

• The ability of the tire to sustain a quiet enough ride.
• Its expertise in cushioning the inconsistencies of the road.

Let’s check out both, one by one.

On-Road Noise Generation

In essence, tire noise mainly comes from air interaction. I mean here, air particles primarily enter through the shoulder gaps and hit the tread walls, creating pattern noise, and tread vibrato.

Now looking at the tread design of Grabber HTS60, one can clearly see how General focuses so much on its overall ride comfort.

I mean its shoulder area is the most packed up, so it limits air to a great degree from coming in, in the first place.

That’s why besides hearing some medium-volume grind (which is only heard on rougher surfaces), you get a generally quieter overall ride experience.

Impact Comfort

Impact comfort is a measure of the tire’s efficiency in absorbing road shocks. And its the expertise of General Grabber HTS60.

And this is because of 2 main things:

One, the tire offers a dedicated layer underneath its rubber (in its internal construction), to nullifying road shocks and vibrations, thus rendering a more seamless driving experience.

And two, it has the advantage of greater tread depth, which basically gives more room for the bumps to dissipate out, before reaching the driver’s seat.

For Your Info: The Another Grabber family member, the General Grabber ATX (review), also features similar dedicated layer for bumps absorption.

To Conclude

The General Grabber HTS60 exhibits a balanced performance across diverse terrains, excelling particularly in dry conditions with appreciable directional and lateral grip.

This is due to its continuous central rib and compact shoulder lugs.

Moreover, the tire also provides steady, (though not exceptional), steering response and demonstrates proficiency in snow.

Though its ice traction needs improvement.

And same goes for its fuel economy.

Though it still offers a quieter, comfortable ride with optimized impact comfort, effectively absorbing road shocks and maintaining lower noise levels.