If you’ve made it this far into this relatively short review, it’s likely that you’re a car enthusiast and are cross-shopping the latest tyres on the market, or maybe you’re just interested in checking the promotion at your local tyre shop is a worthwhile deal.
The new Bridgestone Potenza Adrenalin RE005 is the latest in a long family of the ‘RE’ tyre range, launching in 2026 as the long-awaited successor to the RE003, which arrived way back in 2015.
Since then, the RE003 went on to be one of the best-selling tyres in its segment in Australia, with Bridgestone claiming more than two million tyres sold – equivalent to about 500,000 sets. That’s a lot of rubber.
The success of the RE003 wasn’t that it was a very solid performance tyre, but also that it was affordable, especially when Bridgestone almost endlessly offered it as a part of a ‘buy three, get four’ deal, meaning you’ll often see them on cars which will never take to a twisty road in anger.
But for people like me – and probably you – having a tyre to take a car to the limits on is why we bought them. Since 2015 I have owned four sets of RE003s on a number of vehicles, from a Subaru Impreza WRX STI to a Ford G6E Turbo.
Regardless of the car, its qualities were almost identical: great dry-weather grip together with respectable wet traction, though a relatively short lifespan (thanks to a low treadwear rating) coupled with noticeable road noise meant the RE003s always felt like they were missing that final extra piece which prevented them from being great.
While not quite as sharp, I latterly moved to Michelin’s Pilot Sport series (the 4 and 5 respectively) for better every-day liveability, as well as more linear handling.
Enter the Potenza RE005, which aims to right the wrongs of its 11-year-old predecessor, and make up for the omission of the RE004 in Australia (which didn’t meet the local standards of Bridgestone).
On paper, the RE005 is a marked improvement over the RE003, which you’d certainly hope for given it’s two generations newer and 11 years younger.
Prices have increased slightly for the RE005 compared to the RE003, with 245/40R19s retailing for $487, up from $473, though this difference can vary by size.
While Bridgestone is even now running its ‘four for three’ deal on the RE005, rival tyres such as the Michelin Pilot Sport 5 ($385) and the Continental MaxContact MC7 ($359) come away in the same price ballpark without discounts.
Here are some of the claimed improvements over its ‘grandfather’: the RE005 provides seven per cent more dry grip, 12 per cent more wet grip, has a four per cent better wear life, is seven per cent lighter, and has a huge 25 per cent reduction in rolling resistance.
So that’s how much better the RE005 is on paper, but what about on the road where it counts?
To test out the new tyre, we were taken to the Norwell Motorplex – run by Bathurst winner Paul Morris – to try it out in higher-speed driving scenarios.
First up: a slalom test in the first-generation Toyota 86, fitted with RE005s and the Michelin Pilot Sport 5 as a ‘baseline comparison’.
In dry conditions, the RE005 continues to deliver a sharp response through the steering wheel, directly doing what is asked of it, but with an even higher level of grip than what users of the RE003 have become accustomed to.
While the RE003 had a trade-off of not providing enough warning before it ultimately started to lose grip, the RE005 is very linear as you start to push it to the edge, giving a good amount of time for drivers to alter their inputs or, if you step too far, correct their mistakes.
This linear feeling is also felt in the Michelins, but the Bridgestones are a far sharper tyre overall, delivering that extra bit of grip and confidence which would be ideal not only on a motorkhana track but even on twisty back roads.
Next was a test of the RE005’s wet handling, now fitted to a BMW M240i on a sodden skid pan, where the aim was to drive to – but not too far past – the limit of adhesion.
Even in the high powered rear-wheel drive BMW, the tyres continued to provide traction when driven with gusto, with its amount of grip while on the brakes and giving input to the steering a particular surprise.
The RE003 always felt like it had a much lower ceiling in terms of wet grip, and would bite even harder once overstepped, traits which seem to have been eliminated with the RE005.
Sadly there wasn’t a rival tyre to go back-to-back with, and we weren’t able to test how it felt if you wanted to break traction because for 99.9 per cent of buyers, the aim is to keep the car straight.
Finally, the last test of the RE005s came as a part of multiple laps around the full Norwell circuit, allowing us to feel how they’d perform in the hands of a driving enthusiast who wants a daily driven tyre that can keep up on a track day.
Around the dry circuit it remained an impressive offering, and didn’t lose much grip by the end of a seven or eight lap run of back-to-back hot laps, though serious track day enthusiasts would be better suited to buying the semi-slick RE71s.
There are still some question marks over the RE005 though. All the driving for the day was done around a track in ideal conditions, and not the mixed road surfaces most buyers will contend with on a daily basis.
This meant we couldn’t test road noise – one of the biggest criticisms of the RE003 – nor how they perform on non-sporty cars, as these are marketed as tyres for almost every car.
However, as a previous owner of the RE003s, the RE005s represent a significant leap forward for Bridgestone, and should be on the short list of any motoring enthusiast looking for a summer tyre.
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