pugwal

This is a really cool graph .. it's funny, I would have expected the summer tire to be much further ahead in dry braking/handling as the winter is in snow conditions. If wear (i.e $/mile) wasn't an issue, it shows that winters are a better all-round tire than all-seasons.

S4-NH

Yeah, I've used winters all-year round on older cars, and while they perform quite well in all-seasons, they disintegrate at higher temps. If you have a hot summer, the winter tires basically melt on the road. Poor decision on my part, but I got about 16,000 miles out of those winter tires before I hit baldness.

voltrons_head

Hoppen says the unit is sitting in customs. Keeping my fingers crossed that I'll see it next week but I'm not holding my breath.

rktskicar

I agree, based on average of all 4 seasons, winter is best. However, the wear of the winters is almost 3x that of an all season. 3 sets of tires vs 1 for 29% winter traction advantage is not worth it to me.

By the way, I can certainly afford to have seperate winters and summer setups. I choose not to. Been running this type of setup (ultra perf all-seasons) for 10+ years or so. I live in the PNW where we do not get that much snow in town and only last 20 miles to ski area has snow typically.

I used to run 4 wheel studded snow tires when I drove on a 2 wheel drive vehicle. These AWD drive cars do much better than those on all-seasons.

Bruce

Nutdotnet

I probably wouldn't run winters in the PNW either...I'm talking more about areas where they actually have winters...then again, the craziness of drivers in Portland when I lived there when it did snow made me stay indoors, regardless of the tires/car I had.

That being said, my arguement still stands on running an AS tire on a performance vehicle...I simply don't understand it, I'd run an AS tire in the winter, and a true summer tire in the summer...but if that was the case then I'd simply get a good high-performance winter tire (Alpin PA3) instead of the AS tires.