Mister Bally

Was your BMW all wheel drive or rear? That could make a big difference having all of the torque of acceleration on two vs. four tires.

Pilot Sport A/S for three seaons and X-Ice for snow time for me on my A8. About 40 k miles on the Pilot Sports and 20 k on the X-Ice so far. Don't know if I'll get another full season on the Pilot Sports next year or not. Hopefully as I'm a cheapskate.

Brozee

I used to have pirelli p-zero's. Very expensive summer tire. They were nice with good grip, but I noticed the Pilot Sport A/S's were much more comfortable. I've had mine for 28k miles, and so far it barely seems like too much tread is gone at all. I do my tire rotations at around every 8k.

MP4.2+6.0

First, if you had the original Pilot Sports on your BMW, I think of those as a pretty different tire than the PS2 summer. That is, the Pilot Sport I think of as the one with the very broad "V's" in the tread. The PS2 has longitudinal grooves around its circumference (like the Conti 2 and some others) and is a much newer design. The original Pilot Sport is more like the old Dunlop 9000, which is the predecessor to the SportMaxx. Likewise, Dunlop shifted to the longitudinal tread pattern. That set up helps cornering a good amount, and yes my old 9000's got hard and noisy on my A6 4.2 as they reached there later days in tread life.

For the winter season I got the Michelin PS2 A/S's. I refuse to pay the Pirelli Sottozero 270 price for the winter fitment for my car, which is clearly priced to gouge Bentley owners who need the same fitment. Same tire in closely related (but incompatible) sizes and widths is much less money, and I try to avoid companies who play those kind of pricing elasticity games. The PS2 is passable as a light snow tire from using it last winter a few times. It's not a Dunlop M2 or M3 sport dedicated snow tire by any means like I have used on my A6 4.2, but it is in the same leagues traction wise as other better made A/S's I have used on much more mundane cars.

If you want to go another notch on the winter scale, look at the Conti Extreme Contact. In retrospect, I have wondered if I should have gotten that over the PS2 A/S's. About the most aggressive (read, winter/snow) tread available in an A/S that fits the D3. Very well rated. It was just out when I bought my PS2 A/S's, so there wasn't a lot of info on it. I was concerned it might be a bit noisy with the tread, but the reviews have seemed to dispel that. Quite a bit less $ than the Michelin A/S's too.

transporter2004

hankook v12's. enough said. I ave spent too much money on Michelins, never again. This tire will blow you away.