Fithian

I drove my S5 last winter with the stock PS3 on 18". I did not dare go below 35° and only in dry conditions. It was sort of a PITA since the wife's car had Bizzaks (terrible) and I used that the rest of the time. This year I caved and bought a set of Alzor titanium 18" with Hakka 225-45-18 and it is like the snow doesn't exist. I view all season tires as no-season tires, neither good in snow nor summer. With a $60k car it doesn't pay to skimp.

mlambert890

I've always run all seasons (high quality all seasons) and find them great. I don't think the price of the car should matter; it really isn't about that.

For me I'm not pushing the limits of the car on the 'Ring or doing 3x the speed limit and taking offramps at 70. Likewise in the winter I'm not doing the Dakkar rally or pushing through a foot of snow.

My use for any of my cars is as a daily driver which means I need to know that I can at least go given any reasonable condition. In brutal snow I can easily defer any trips short of a pure emergency, and I've found that even in brutal snow the really good all seasons do OK as long as you take it slow.

Similarly, the really good all seasons are fine for the type of driving 90% of the people do 90% of the time in the summer.

Would ultra high performance summer tires plus blizzaks be better? Absolutely. I find fitting tire change times in, storing tires and rims, and worrying about getting the timing right too much of a PiTA for my schedule though. The return on investment just isn't good.

It's really a bad mischaracterization to imply that the best all seasons are useless. It's just not true (and I've run them now on my Evo, GTR, BMWs and now the RS5).

Summer tires in really cold weather, on the other hand, is a fundamentally really really bad idea in a RWD car, but *might* be workable on an AWD as long as, as others have said here, you dial it waaaay back and use a lot of caution.