emp001

Hi,
I am waiting on a SQ5, will be here first week of November. Super excited.
I have the wheels package thats gets the 21in rims with summer performance tires. I live in the seattle area. Can anyone advise if that would be okay or if would need to swap to 20in wheels possibly with winter/all season tires? Will be driven mostly in the city.

Thanks
Emp

daberlin

You will absolutely want Winter/All Season tires for Seattle area. The 21" Pirelli PZeros on the SQ5 are good Summer performance oriented tires (I am biased however as I prefer the Ultra High Performance Michelin Pilot 4S more), but for the remainder of the year, you'll want a set of 20" wheels with appropriate tires. You should be able to find a set on eBay quite soon.

emp001

Thanks!

JT4

Another thing to keep in mind is that it's not just about driving in snow. Summer tires in temps below 40 degrees are sketchy to drive on, under 35 degrees they're dangerous. IME the soft compound hardens up to where it feels like you're driving on hockey pucks.. So even if it is a sunny dry day, if it's cold enough you need to proceed with caution. Granted my experience was with a RWD car, and since it barely sees rain and won't see snow I opted for a set of Michelin A/S-3's for the times when I want to drive it on cold NY days..

Transfer

I agree with the above posters. I live in Seattle and have had summer and winter tires on my vehicles for a decade. Some will tell you it's fine to run the summer tires all winter and just be cautious. Don't listen to them - it's advice from fools who are just too cheap to buy a winter or all-season set. I don't do all-seasons because I go into the mountains and all-seasons don't really have very good traction all year so if I'm getting a second set, it should probably be a winter set. I do go for high performance winter tires though. I don't think the full blown winter snow tire or studs are needed in Seattle and the high performance winters offer better traction and handling in cold dry and wet which is most of what we see here.

You can even technically put Pirelli Scorpion Winter tires on your 21" wheels but you don't want to be swapping tires on/off those wheels twice a year. My recommendation is to stick with OEM sizing. Get a separate wheelset 20x8.5 or 20x9 with an offset of 30-34 and go with 255/45/20 tires. It's not clear what 19" wheels will fit around the big front brake calipers but the cosmetics are poor with 19" anyway IMO.

emp001

thanks!