Patricia Wong

I have a 97 A4 1.8T. I am debating if I should buy snow tires for the winter or keep the ones I have now, which I believe are all-season. Does anyone have any good experience with snow tires and if so, which brand?
Thanks.

ErikR

Where do you live, and do you ski? If you live in the south, all-seasons are probably fine, otherwise prudent folks go for snows; if even just to protect their investment. Most of your answers for specific brands are found a couple of inches below this post.

KHF

Thanks to Erik and others. These two seem to be the best in their respective approaches to winter driving. The Blizzaks MZ-01's with Quattro will get you through anything old man winter can throw at you but are not the greatest on the dry freeway. The Pirelli 210 Assymetrics are good winter tires with better than average dry road performance. It depends on your goal. Do you want to have the best/safest tire when the roads are at there worst or do can you handle a less qualified snowtire that gives you the dry road performance that you would use most of the time. I'm still undecided, sorry.

John

From what I've heard, they seem to be a decent compromise between the MZ-01s and the 210s: a tire that has an ice compound, but still has decent (at least not scary) dry performance. Where I live, the temp in the winter often nudges up above 32F during the day, but then everything freezes at night, so I'm leaning towards the AAs.

KHF

At my house in park City I can have up to 6ft drifts in my driveway. Forerunners have gotten stuck on my street. Fortunately I also own a Nissan Pathfinder for the deep days. But sometimes its unavoidable and I need to take the A4 in two feet of snow. My impression of the alpin was more of an ice tire rather than a soft/deep snow tire. But I could be wrong??/

Phil from the snowbelt

This applies even more so if you have high performance (V, Z, or W- rated) tires, which includes the Sport option tires. The "all-season" tire is, at best, a compromise b/t snow, rain and performance oriented tires.
The $500 or so dollars you save by not buying the tires and wheels will eventually be spent on the insurance deductible you pay WHEN, not if, you get in an accident. Plus, the increased insurance costs and demerit points on your liscence if the accident is your fault.And driving on the proper tires makes driving in snow a much less stressful experience.
There is lots of info in the archives on the merits of the various brands of snow and "ice" tires. Ice tires can be good if you live in an area that has lots of icy conditions, because they have a soft, multi-cellular rubber compound that "grips" the ice. Remember though that these ice compounds wear very quickly on dry roads, so are probably not a good option unless you seldom drive long distances on dry roads (or place a premium on ice handling capability and are prepared to replace them more often than conventional snows).
I hope this helps.

John

The reason I brought up the Alpins is that I thought you were looking for an ice capable tire: Bridgestone markets the MZ-01 as "The Ice Grabber" and Tire Rack rates its ice traction as excellent, but its snow traction as only "good." I had a look at last October's Consumer Reports, and they prefered the Michelin XM+S Alpin (precursor to the AA) to the Blizzak WS-15 for snow traction (their tests were done on packed snow though). Most of the serious winter tires seem to have some sort of ice compound which apparently impacts deep snow traction; one exception I can think of is the Nokian Haks; most of the stuff I've read in the archives seems to praise their snow performance, but ice performance seems mixed.

Greg W

I live in Columbus, Ohio. Very flat, and maybe 2 big snows a year. I also live in the city, so snow only sticks around for 2 days or so before its cleared (even in a big storm).
So.... I have been through 2 winters with M&S tires with absolutely no problems. For 99% of the conditions I'm going to see living here, I don't need snows. Even in those cases where snows would have been helpful (i.e. last year when my parking lot was unplowed with about a foot of new snow, the M&S tires, with quattro, got me going).
However, if I lived somewhere with more hills, or where it snowed any more, I would definitely get snows.
So, you've got to judge for yourself what your terrain and climate require.

Greg

KHF

Is the Michelin xm+s ther same as the Michelin XMS 330? From the tirerack pictures it doesnt look as agressive as the BlizzakWS-15 but I will have to check out that Cons reports at home tonight. I spoke with a Bridestone tech-man located in portland who said the problem with the WS-15 si once you wear through the first 30% it becomes an all-season but that the New MZ-01 & WS-50 (for which doesnt come in our size yet) has the soft ice/snow compound throughout. I dont know. If you went skiing every day in the winter what tire would you use???

Mac

I had Arctic Alpins on my 93 Accord last year for the winter. I was really surprised by how well they were able to pull through the snow. A big improvement over all seasons. I don't drive very aggresively, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend them for relatively low noise and good performance on dry highways. I was also impressed with how little they wore - I probably put something like 15 000 km (9000 mi) on them, and saw very little wear when I sold the car.

Having said the above, I've just bought a set of 210A's on separate rims, and am awaiting delivery. They seem quite highly recommended. If their ice performance doesn't quite match some other "ice compound" tires, I'll just drive a little more carefully to compensate, as we ALL should.

Good luck.

Mac
99.5 1.8TQTip