Immediately upon purchasing my new A4, I went to my local tire dealer to do something about the awful Goodyears that came on my car. I was originally looking to upgrade to a full 'high-performance' tire, but the techrep at the shop recommended against it. I live in New England, where snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain are a common occurence. Moving to a high-performance tire set up would mean that I would essentially have to switch to winter tires in the winter and back to HP tires for the rest of the year. Ok, lots of people do that; but this approach was a bit much for me.

The Dunlop SP 4000 is a z-rated performance all-season tire. It is not a high-performance tire. It is a compromise position. It promised to perform better than the lower speed-rated tires that came stock on the car in all driving categories while still being able to handle the winter conditions here in the Northeast.

I have been extremely happy with them! As promised, the dry weather handling, noise and ride quality are all improved over the stock Goodyears. Wet weather handling and grip are also better than stock. I did not have a chance to test the stock tires in snow, so I can't make an objective comparison; but the SP 4000's handle the snow very well!

Since I got mine, Dunlop have released a new model, the SP 5000 AS. It looks like a very different, more agressive tread pattern. I still have a lot of time left on my 4000's (they are wearing well after 20,000 miles), but I will certainly go right to my tire dealer to check out the 5000's when these do start to wear out.