Yokohama Geolander CV G058 Review

The Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 is your trusty all-season touring tire, ideal for crossovers and SUVs. It’s equipped with features to enhance grip during wet weather and maintains solid performance throughout winter. Let’s see what else this tire has to offer.

Being a tire engineer, I can tell you that the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 displays strong grip on dry roads, excels in wet conditions, and performs commendably in winter. Its design ensures good tread life and fuel efficiency, though ride comfort can be soft. Overall, it’s a reliable tire with minor trade-offs in handling and comfort.

Sizes and their Specs

The Yokohama Geolander CV G058 comes in 16 to 20 inches rims. They all have the following specs.

• Speed ratings: H and V.
• Load ratings: SL and XL.
• Tread depth: 11/32″ on all.
• Weight range: 22 to 35 lbs.
• Treadwear warranty: 65k miles.
• UTQG rating: 740 A A.

Side Note: Looking for the perfect all-season tire? Before you decide, be sure to check out my extensive guide.

Tread Design

The Yokohama Geolander CV G05 offers an innovative tread pattern, offering a refreshing departure from its predecessor.

Its central section features three robust ribs; the central rib is densely siped, while the adjacent ribs combine similar siping with lateral tread voids.

Collectively, they carve out four longitudinal channels, with the outermost ones being slimmer.

This design ensures impressive grip on both wet and dry terrains.

Furthermore, the tire is crafted with advanced rubber technology, highlighted by its prominent shoulder lugs.

These lugs bear straight-line siping and feature curved lateral voids in between. Moreover, they also have ridges in between them, contributing to superior noise reduction.

Moreover, the outer circumferential grooves these shoulders make, have zigzag biters, which act as snow vices.

Find all the tires compared with Geolander CV G058.

Dry Performance

When assessing the performance of a tire on dry roads, one should focus on 3 main dimensions, where the two are lateral and directional grip, and third one is the tire’s overall steering character.

Let’s analyze them all.

Directional Grip

Directional grip is largely determined by the efficiency of rubber-to-road contact, particularly from the central region of the tire.

But why the center?

Well for one, it has the most weight concentration as the tire rolls straight, and it also offers majority of tread real-estate.

Now, the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 does pretty well here.

It is designed with sleek, longitudinally-aligned ribs that with continuous running designs, optimize rubber-to-road contact and, subsequently, increase friction.

I mean, consider its tread pattern again, and see how there are no lateral grooves in the middle most rib.

Moreover, its lateral siping is also further adding to that grip.

Yes, I know, sipes are made for wet grip, but with their lateral orientation, they are basically able to open up and bite in to the ground, adding to the tire’s overall braking efficacy.

Dry Handling and Steering

Unlike the directional grip, this is a complicated area to discuss. And to fully understand, its best to start by discussing the 3 phases of cornering:

• Entry: This is the initial phase where the vehicle begins to navigate the corner, involving braking and potentially downshifting.
• Mid corner: At this point, the vehicle is directly in the midst of the turn, making steering feedback particularly vital.
• Exit: Here, the vehicle commences straightening out, and throttle is reapplied.

Now, although the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 gives out above-average steering precision, and mid-corner feedback, its on-center feel is pretty light.

In English, it means that the tire does a great entry, where the brakes are efficient, and you get to know the exact limits of the available traction, when you are in the middle of the cornering, but once you exit, the car seems to go a little out of your control, as it needs less effort to get straighten up.

So it requires a little getting used to.

I mean don’t get me wrong its still pretty manageable, but it can use a little weight at the end there.

Tread Life

The endurance of tire tread life is fundamentally about striking the optimal equilibrium among rolling resistance, tread depth, and the material composition of the tire.

These basically decide two main dimensions here. The tread wearing rate, and the tread wearing time.

Now, the Geolandar CV G058 does pretty great in both these areas.

It’s tread featuring heat resistance compounds, and high grade rubber additives fight off the burning, while its above average (analyzing its competitors, I mean), tread depth of 11/32″ allow for more time to reach down to 2/32″ replacement levels.

That’s why you end up with a tire having 740 treadwear rating and coming out with 65k miles as tread warranty.

Side Note: If tread life is more important to you, then you have to check out the Goodyear Assurance MaxLife (review). This tire leads here, among Yokohama’s direct competitors.

Overall Wet Performance

The Yokohama, where it lacks a little on dry, really makes up for it on wet roads, where it offers pretty decent overall traction and hydroplaning resistance, the two main factors of overall wet performance.

Let’s evaluate them both one by one.

Wet Traction

Wet traction is the strongest point of Yokohama Geolandar CV G058, where it combines top-notch wet grip with its superb steering response (compared to its direct competitors).

And so with this tire, you get the fastest overall laps (as seen on tests), comparatively.

With leading wet directional grip, the tire is able to stop efficiently, entering the corner, while its mid corner, and on center feel is also one of the best in the group.

I mean it doesn’t have the on-center feedback issue like seen in its dry performance section, it has a good weight to it, and so you get an above-average overall over/understeering balance.

Hydroplaning Resistance

The Geolandar CV also ranks high in hydroplaning resistance, showcasing superior float speeds.

Its four broad circumferential channels facilitate impressive straight float speeds, and, in conjunction with lateral grooves, the tire also demonstrates commendable performance in curved aquaplaning tests.

(For folks who don’t know, curved aqua test judges how fast a tire can turn over watery surface).

Now the Yokohama has another advantage here. It has a tread depth of 11/32″ on all its sizes, where its competitors cap at 10/32″.

Now 1/32″ isn’t a lot but it really helps in overall water expulsion in terms of flow rate.

Winter Traction

The Yokohama is also leading the group in terms of winter performance, even without the 3-Peak Mountain Snowflake certification.

So what’s helping this tire here? Well there are a couple of things.

• It features advanced CV-2 compound.
• Its rubber is also thermally adaptive.
• It’s section width is narrower on average, compared to other tires.

With the CV2 compound, basically the tire allows sipes to bite snow with greater efficacy. And with having a thermally adaptive rubber, all its biters don’t get stiffen up with freezing temperatures, so they don’t loose their biting power on snow and ice.

And with narrower section width, the tire basically puts more pressure down on snow, lodging them in the sipes and grooves and that forms effective snow to snow contact.

But how is that important?

Well, snowflakes have a unique arms, and they interlock with each other. In other words, they stick with each other more, compared to tire’s tread.

So with that contact, the Geolandar G058 offers superb winter performance.

Fuel Efficiency

Talking about fuel efficiency, it’s important to know that it’s closely related to the friction the tread makes against the road. That’s why the tire’s weight, composition, and design play a huge role in fuel efficiency.

Now, here, the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 with its lighter single ply construction, doesn’t stress too much on the tread and lugs as they rub against the road.

So less rolling resistance is generated for one, and two, the lugs are kept at place (and they don’t move around alot, or bend).

Rolling resistance is the obvious one, while with limited lug flexing, the energy is saved up, and invested instead on into the rolling of the tire, enhancing fuel economy.

Ride Quality

Quality or feel of ride is highly dependent on the level of tread noise and the tire’s proficiency in neutralizing road irregularities.

Let’s start with noise.

Noise Generation

In terms of noise, the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 is pretty satisfying overall.

I mean sure, there’s a light growl (at lower speeds), and some varying tones, which is highly dependent on the surface type, the overall decibels were pretty low.

So what makes this tire quiet enough?

Well, a lot of factors are at play here, where the tire’s advanced polymers offer viscoelastic properties, which basically allow for soaking of sound-waves/noise so it would not echo.

Moreover, the tire also incorporates variable pitch patterns and noise-reducing grooves, which create various frequencies, and those try to cancel out each other.

Overall Ride Comfort

The Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 delivers a very soft ride. I mean its too soft.

But isn’t that good for comfort? Well not really, you see, you also need a controlled ride, where you need effective dissipation of the bumps, and Yokohama doesn’t offer you with both.

Its rubber basically features a very high silica density, and that deprives the tread of the necessary stability when absorbing bumps.

So after the initial impact, the tire takes longer to recover.

So What’s The Verdict?

The Yokohama Geolandar CV G058 offers a mixed bag of results. On dry roads, it provides strong directional grip, though handling requires some acclimation.

In wet conditions, it excels with impressive traction and hydroplaning resistance, largely owing to its superior tread depth.

Winter performance is also commendable, thanks to its innovative design and compounds.

While tread life and fuel efficiency are strong points, ride comfort might feel a tad soft for some.

And lastly noise levels are effectively managed, making the overall driving experience relatively quiet.