Uniroyal Laredo Cross Country Tour Review & Rating for 2024

Whether you drive a 4×4 light truck (Land Rover Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz Class GLS, etc.), a sport-utility vehicle (Toyota Highlander, Honda Plot etc.), a van (Ford Transit Connect, Nissan NV200, etc.) or a pickup (GMC Sierra, Ford F-150, etc.), it is crucial that the tire underneath your vehicle complements your driving style, your needs and that of your vehicle.

That means that if you own an SUV, pickup or light truck, these vehicles tire that are bigger and have a higher load index. Especially in the curves, they need their tire’s sidewall to be stiffer – so that its center of gravity helps the tire carry your vehicle’s weight.

Don’t know where you can find a tire with all these features? Our review of the Uniroyal Laredo Cross Country Tour reveals that it has most of them. Throw into the mix this tire’s all-season usability, and it gets easier to see why its sales are going strong almost a decade after its release.

Read on to find out more about the Uniroyal Laredo Cross Country Tour.

When Michelin were announcing the release of this tire in 2011, their spokesperson claimed that it is capable of giving a nice, quiet highway ride, the stability of a passenger car and responsive handling on difficult terrains.

Since we have heard these sort of claims hundreds, if not thousands, of times before from manufacturers eager to sell their produce, we did what we always do to gauge the truthfulness behind them: we took the Uniroyal Laredo for a test-drive.

Treadwear and Durability

At the cost of sounding technical, it’s the computer-optimized tread design of this tire which allows it to keep premature wear at bay. This design consists of independent treads that evenly distribute the tire’s weight, thereby dissipating any wear-causing pressure.

Next comes the Tru-Form technology which has supplemented this tire’s tread with a stress-tested contact patch, whose only job is to promote even tread wear throughout the shelf-life of this model. Hence the reason why this tire maintains its optimal shape throughout its life.

Dry Performance

Even before we took this tire out for a test ride, we knew its performance on paved roads and the dry tarmac was going to be above par. We were aware of it because of this tire’s T-speed rating – one which allows it to sustain a constant speed of 119mph over a long period of time.

Provided you haven’t been living under a cave before coming to this article, you’d know that a vehicle can only achieve, let alone sustain, this kind of breakneck speed on a fully paved road without any potholes or any other disturbances which might force it to slow down.

However, that doesn’t mean that this model’s braking power is suspect. It has a solid center rib that uses its center of gravity to give the driver improved control (braking) and stability on high-speeds. So you aren’t going to encounter any problem during cornering, either.

Wet Performance

As is the case with most all-season tires, the Uniroyal Laredo Cross Country Tour reserves its best performance for wet roads. Perhaps that’s because Michelin knows that when a driver invests in a tire which they expect to perform 365-days a year, they won’t be taking it on dry tarmac too often.

The Uniroyal Laredo, though, won’t mind if you drive it into deep puddles. It comes with wide circumferential grooves which not only absorb off-road shocks but also offer effective water evacuation – thereby keeping the threat of hydroplaning at bay.

Provided you don’t know about it, hydroplaning is when your car starts sliding uncontrollably. It happens when motor water is accumulating in the tires that the treads can displace. Luckily for you, the wide circumferential grooves of this unit won’t push you face-to-face with this dangerous phenomenon.

Snow & Ice

Two features of this tire, in particular, give you the confidence to ride it in inclement weather conditions, the first of which is its wide circumferential grooves whose utility we have already discussed in detail while examining the performance of the Uniroyal Laredo in wet conditions.

Its all-season tread pattern, however, has been escaping our attention thus far. What this pattern does is offer the tire with more traction points and open tread grooves. Both these are parts responsible for maintaining the tire’s grip on the road, thereby providing a strong grip on snow-laded roads.

Noise and Comfort

As long as you’re driving on a paved road, the computer-optimized tread pattern of this model will provide you with a comfortable and quiet highway ride. That’s because it has a narrow continuous center rib which not only keeps premature wear at bay but also reduces the tire’s noise.

However, the moment you go off-the-highway, you should brace yourself for a noisy experience. Perhaps that was because of the road we were traveling on – as it was full of potholes. Still, this all-season tire is one of the noisiest on bad roads.