Tires deserve more respect. We media types in the automotive industry are inundated with press releases touting some new performance benchmark by some new performance car -- quicker 0 - 60 times or greater G-forces on the skid pad or, best yet, some new Nürburgring lap time that makes a new car the fastest thing ever in whatever hyper-specific vehicle niche that the manufacturer has decided to play within.

These releases talk about horsepower gains, suspension tweaks, aerodynamic efficiencies, and sometimes even the heroics of the drivers behind the wheel. Often, it’s the high-performance Michelin, Pirelli, or other weapons-grade rubber that delivers the lion’s share of the performance, tires that rarely get more than a token mention in those effervescent press releases.

Why? Because tires don’t sell cars, and even the most exciting ones are still black and round and largely hidden from view. Yet there’s some fascinating improvements being made down there, while most in the interest of higher grip and longer life, factors you’ll never notice on a casual Sunday drive.

That’s not the case with the latest from Nokian. Before I’d even left my driveway on the things, I could tell that the new Hakkapeliitta 01 tires were something different from what I’d experienced before. I’ve been running and racing Nokian’s studded winter tires on my Subarus for well over a decade now, going back to the Hakka 7, tires that spit out their studs with more vigor than an ‘80s outfielder with a mouth full of chaw.

I swore I’d never buy another set after that, but the Hakka 8s did markedly better at keeping their studs where they belong, with each generation improving from there. This past year, it was the Hakka 10s I ran, which lost but a few studs over a full season of running. This new Hakkapeliitta 01 tire, though, does something very different: hiding its studs altogether when not needed.

It’s not quite the James Bond-style magic trick that some more creative headlines might have made you think when the tech was announced a little over a month ago, but it is impressive just the same. Each of the hundreds of studs in the surface of the tire is backed by a temperature-sensitive material that softens when warm. Simply driving the tire on a dry surface generates enough friction and heat to allow the studs to be pushed back into the tread of the tire by the weight of the vehicle.

However, driving on snow and ice, the cold surface causes the backing material to harden and expand, keeping the stud extended even when crushed by the weight of your car.

I dig into the details quite a bit more over in my review for The Verge, but the net result is a tire that is substantially quieter on dry roads, which is what most people drive on most of the time, even in the dead of winter.

The noise reduction was immediately apparent, but the tires also promise a 30 percent reduction in road wear, which should also result in a corresponding reduction in suspended particulates. That’s the formal term for dust kicked up by tires like these, which is a genuine health concern.

So, even though they weren’t designed by Q Branch, the tech here genuinely impressed me, and it is a rare example of a new tire development actually getting the attention it deserves.

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