Hankook Tire takes on market for high-end sports cars

South Korea's Hankook Tire & Technology is reinforcing its partnerships with makers of high-performance sports cars based on a systematic development process such as continuous development of source technology and testing.

The company on Monday said it supplies tires for high-performance and new vehicle models of major global brands such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Tesla and Lamborghini and is an active motorsports partner.

For such vehicles to achieve high performance, the role of tires is most important because of their role in providing a quiet and comfortable ride while delivering strong performance of the powertrain on any road surface. Other requirements are the best grip, durability and low-noise tires.

Through its development of such source technology and numerous tests, Hankook Tire in 2015 signed a partnership with Porsche.

"Hankook Tire actually prepared for partnerships a long time ago," an industry source said. "To supply Porsche, it satisfied strict requirements through continuous real-world vehicle tests under equal or more extreme conditions.”

Hankook Tire supplies tires for the four-door sports sedan of Porsche's Panamera, high-performance sports roadster 718 Boxster, crossover sport utility vehicle (SUV) Macan and super premium SUV Cayenne. The tiremaker also supplies high-performance tires exclusively for electric vehicles (EV) to Porsche for the latter's first pure EV Taycan, which was launched in 2021.

Based on this experience, the company said it formed a supply partnership with other major sports car brands like Audi for its high-performance RS and BMW for its M series.

Hankook Tire also provides tires for new cars such as the Audi RS Q8, ultra-high-performance coupe RS7 Sportback and super wagon RS6 Avant. The tiremaker's products are also on BMW's compact luxury SUVs X3 M and X4 M and race car M4 GT4.

Hankook Tire signed a contract to supply racing tires from this year to the Lamborghini Super Trofeo motor racing series. Thus all Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo EVO 2 vehicles competing this season will have the tiremaker's racing series Ventus.

Write to Sungsu Bae at baebae@hankyung.com