Tire Swap season – the end of the road for our summer tires

For all of us living in places where we have more than one type of weather, we also have more than one type of tire set for our cars. With the first falling flakes of snow this year, our Yokohama S.drive tires have been unceremoniously stacked in our tire storage room, which is a great shame  as we’ve come to really love these tires, but sadly being true summer tires, they have to go.. for now.

We normally tend to run more of a high performance all season tire, mainly because where we live we tend to get a lot of rain, snow, mud, and combinations of all three. High performance summer tires usually aren’t all that useful to us. Amazingly enough, we found that the S.drive was remarkably good in all of the aforementioned weather, minus snow. We just didn’t dare tempt fate to see what they were like in snow. We did drive them on some sub-freezing mornings on dry roads, and while they were VERY hard, they warmed up quickly enough, and weren’t skittish at all.

Leading up to fall and late fall, the S.drives were wonderful. For a high grip tire, they rode very well, with minimal noise, excellent handling in rain, and really no bad behavior at all. And we really loved the way they handled. These tires transformed our A4, bringing out its fun side in the twisty bits. Pushing the limits on these tires isn’t really possible on the street, yet on our favorite roads, they seemed to want it. Lean into them a little, they just grip more. They stay true and solid, and don’t make a peep.

In the time we used the tires this year, we never found their limits of adhesion. This isn’t a bad thing, and honestly we weren’t really trying to find the limits, but even in the wet and cold, the Yokohama S.drive was a wonderfully reliable and trustworthy tire under our A4. When we emerge from our frosty winter season, the S.drives will find themselves back on our A4, and we’ll report back as we put more miles on them.