Razzy530

I have a set of Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50's. I think this tread is the most aggresive for snow. I have them with the Borbet CA's 16 inch wheels.

JSpira

It's not a question of tearing through the streets - it's a question of overall wet and dry handling outside of snow, which is (in the New York area) 95% of winter driving. Having better braking capability in wet and dry weather (non-snow) is probably more important because it's pretty easy to stay home the first day of a blizzard and the streets will be clear day 2.

Winter tires are on the car to keep everyone safe in winter period, not just when it snows.

Snow and ice tires are really intended for a much greater percentage of snow and ice driving, which is why winter performance tires are becoming much more popular.

SergeyM

I am not sure you needed to go to such an extreme. Any winter sports would do just fine in NJ winters. They are more expensive but they are relatively decent on dry roads. WS-50 are too soft for any semi-agressive driving.

CWS530

OOOOOH! This is almost as good as the 535 vs. 550 debate.

rafichicago

Yeah I will throw in Dunlop Wintersports to the pack!

Anzafin

What is winter driving?

Martin.T

Anzafin: Great point =)
I assume you also drive on studded tyres? I have Good Year UltraGrip 500 225/50/17, and where my girlfriend cant get upp for the hills with her new Dunlop non-studded tyres I can go easily with my uses studded tyres.

But what is winter and sport tyre? Its either one, either its good in the snow or either good in the cold dry days.

This is how a real winter tyre should look like.
But overall I have to say that BMW performs very poorly in the snow if you compare it to a Volvo or Saab



This is how my wintertyres look.

Anzafin

I have exactly those tyres: Nokian Hakkapeliitta 7

I have not much to say about driving at winter time. Just that it feels very confusing reading people sometimes blaming the BMW being poor in the snow and someone wouldn't even drive the car in snowy conditions. Proper winter tyres make a different, but it's not all about that.

It is completely another world, lots of things must be taken into consideration different way than in summer time. I feel the summer and winter as two completely different seasons for my car, and my driving behaviour depends on that.

I understand very well that the winter in many places is not that kind of winter how I see it, and people may get confused in their countries when getting all that snow that has been coming this winter. The seasons radically differ here from each other and the fall and the spring are the signs for me to get prepared onto oncoming change of time of year and therefore the drastic changes in driving conditions.

So, my only tip for driving at winter time (in snowy conditions), whatever the car is or tyres are, is that people should take things into consideration completely different than before (summer time).

And of course Volvo and Saab perform so differently in snow compared to BMW; it's FWD vs. RWD thing.

- Antti -

VW2545i

+1

Love mine!

Razzy530

I dont do any agresive driving in the winter anyway. Only in the warmer summer months. Its a grip issue.
(ie. cold tires on a F1 car---no grip.)