Yokohama Advan APEX V601 on a Hellcat: Cheat Mode Activated
Yokohama ADVAN APEX V601 tires offer impressive handling and launch grip on the Hellcat Challenger.
One of the biggest struggles with owning and driving a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is traction. Whether you are blasting off from a stop or hammering through the corners, the stock Pirelli tires fall short in many ways. Sure, the factory-issued rubber offers decent cornering, launching and braking abilities with reasonable levels of wear, but like most original equipment tires, they offer lots of room for improvement.
Worse yet, the factory tires are quite expensive for the mediocre performance levels, leaving most Hellcat Challenger owners looking at other tire options when the time comes for new rubber.
Fortunately, the folks from Yokohama offered me a set of their ADVAN APEX V601 high performance tires for testing in the stock size of 275/40/20. This is one of their premium tires for high performance cars, featuring a design that is intended to offer similar performance to far more expensive tires.
Also, the ADVAN APEX V601 is similarly priced to the factory Pirelli tires on Tire Rack, making this an excellent head-to-head comparison based on price. However, there is hardly any comparison in performance, as the Yokohama tires outshine the stock Pirellis in every way.
Handling the Corners
Before getting into the handling capabilities of the Yokohama ADVAN APEX V601 tires, I should point out that I went into testing these tires with realistic expectations. My Hellcat Challenger weighs around 4,500 pounds and I know that no street tire is going to make it handle like a Viper. Many people buy very high end tires with the belief that they will make a 4,500-pound car corner like a Miata, but that isn’t the case. That being said, the ADVAN APEX V601 tires allow my supercharged Dodge to handle much more confidently than it did with the stock Pirellis.
I live in a fairly rural area of Metro Detroit and because of that, most of the roads are laid out in a grid with few curves. However, there are a few places where I can go to check the handling capabilities of test cars.
These are curvy roads that I’ve covered many times, including in my Challenger on the stock tires. I know how hard I can hit these turns and how hard I can throttle out. I also know what it feels like when I have pushed the car too hard, with the front end heading towards the outside on entry or the rear tires smoking on exit.
The Yokohama ADVAN APEX V601 features a solid center rib that is designed to help traction stability at higher speeds. Most tires have lateral grooves through every rib to improve traction on wet surfaces. The downside to those lateral grooves is that they allow for small amounts of movement of the rib under hard cornering, leading to a compromise in stability.
The APEX solid center rib is combined with an outside rib that has no complete lateral grooves. This is the area that is under the most stress during hard cornering, so removing the lateral grooves improves both stability and contact with the road.
When I hit the turns too hard with my stock tires, I could feel the front end almost inching out. There isn’t a complete loss of traction, but the tires are clearly struggling for grip. With the ADVAN APEX V601, that feeling of the front end inching towards the outside of the turn is not present at the same speeds.
I was also able to hit these turns a bit faster than usual, but considering that these are public roads, I wasn’t going insanely fast. I would call it extremely spirited driving and in those circumstances, the Hellcat Challenger is definitely more capable heading into the turns with the Yokohama tires.
Coming out of the turns with a Hellcat Challenger is almost as much of a task as entering the turns with a 4,500-pound muscle car. With 650 horsepower at the rear wheels, no tire will allow you to just mash the throttle while exiting a turn. You have to roll into the throttle. The stock tires struggled to get traction in second gear and, in some cases, third gear.
The Yokohama APEX tires allowed me to climb into the throttle a bit earlier on exit in second gear. More importantly, these tires are much quicker to grip in a straight line in second gear when compared to the stock rubber, allowing for a much harder pull when you get straight coming out of a turn.
The final handling test for the ADVAN APEX V601 tires on my Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat was a highway on-ramp. The long, sweeping turn allows for quite a bit of acceleration, but in the supercharged Mopar muscle car, there is plenty of room for error with stock rubber.
Accelerate too quickly and the nose will head for the outer guardrail. Apply too much throttle and the rear tires will be set ablaze. With the Yokohama tires, I was able to get through the sweeping on-ramp with more speed without any concern of understeer. The front tires held their line and the rear tires put the power to the ground, allowing me to reach 0.92 Gs at speeds well over the posted limit.
‘Yokohama ADVAN APEX V601 on a Hellcat: Cheat Mode Activated continued…’
