5 Things You Need to Know About The Blackhawk Iceprey HW06

A good set of winter tires engineered to provide dependable, solid performance no matter the conditions is hard to come by – unless you’re willing to spend an arm and a leg. But with the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06, developed specifically for SUVs and light trucks, you don’t have to.

Automakers love to talk about safety these days, talking up their sophisticated new electronic gizmos developed to intervene and protect in the event of a potentially hazardous driving scenario. That’s great and all, but when it comes to driving, safety starts with having the right tires equipped, and at no time is that clearer than during the slick, snowy, icy conditions of winter. Unfortunately, many of the best-known snow- and ice-ready winter tires cost big bucks.

Thankfully, we have tires like the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06. Available exclusively at OK Tire in Canada – it’s a truly capable, well-engineered and well-made winter tire with a friendlier price tag. But why should you consider the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 for your next set of winter tires? Read on for the top five things you should know about this remarkably capable winter tire from a little-known brand.

It’s Been Developed from The Ground Up for SUVs And Light Trucks

SUVs and light trucks have unique needs when it comes to tires. These vehicles are more often rear- or four-wheel-drive, giving them markedly different handling and stability characteristics in all conditions, and they’re larger and heavier than your average family sedan, making grip under braking and cornering all that much more difficult to ensure.

What you need with this sort of vehicle is a tire developed specifically with SUVs and light trucks in mind – a tire like the Blackhawk HW06. This tire isn’t aimed at small passenger vehicles like sedans and hatchbacks; it’s been designed from the ground up for the Ford F-150s and Chevy Tahoes of the world, and that makes it more useable on taller, wider, heavier vehicles.

It Features an Aggressive Tread Design, With Some Truly Impressive Winter Performance

In more northern climates, winter tire performance is all about evacuating snow and slush out from underneath the tire to maintain contact with the pavement. Here, the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 excels, with an aggressive X-Groove channel design that gives the white stuff multiple paths to get out from under the tire while providing plenty of multidirectional grip to boot, with a dizzying number of angled sipes that help the tread blocks find all the grip they can, whether the road is covered in snow, ice, or water.

The Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 Is Made from Specially Formulated Compounds

One of the biggest threats to tire grip during the colder months is the ambient temperature itself; when rubber gets cold, it tends to lose quite a bit of its flexibility, and that means it’s not able to interlock with the pavement as well as usual. To correct this, Blackhawk has devised a special proprietary rubber compound with silica-reinforced tread blocks to help keep the tire pliable and grippy even in frigid temperatures.

That pliability is ideally balanced for the sort of loads the tire is likely to see while driving, which is why it’s a good thing the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 has been developed from the ground up specifically for SUVs and light trucks – relatively heavy vehicles that often subject their tires to greater loads than smaller passenger vehicles.

It’s Even Good When There’s No Snow or Ice on The Road At All

Most densely populated places, snowplows and salt trucks come around after each blizzard to clear and salt the roads, so you’re not stuck dealing with lingering snow and ice long after the storm has passed. That means it’s important for a winter tire to be a capable, pleasant companion in clear conditions, as well – and here again, the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 excels. The silica-reinforced compound helps keep it grippy and pliable in cold weather, which is essential in the cold even when the pavement is nice and clear, and a solid center rib helps ensure a smooth, comfortable ride with excellent stability and cornering performance.

The Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 Is Studdable, For Even Better Winter Performance

Tire studs aren’t legal everywhere, but if you can run them and you need the absolute best ice and hardpack-snow performance you can get, the Blackhawk Iceprey HW06 gives you the option of studding your tires. For the unacquainted, studs are essentially little tungsten-carbide pins that you can insert into certain compatible winter tires, which provide numerous rigid biting points for piercing and holding onto ice, hardpack snow, and other slick unpaved surfaces. The HW06 features numerous stud locations on both the inner and outer tread rows, for super ice grip across the tire’s contact patch.

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