I have started to think of rims and tyres for the first winter of my new bimma. Tyre choice is easier as I have experience with my previous cars - Dunlop Winter Sport M3, Good Year Ultra Grip 6 or Bridgestone Blizzak 22 seem to be the best around. I am having some trouble deciding on the wheels though. I am split between the 122 style which goes with 245/45 rubber and looks nicer in my opinion and the 116 with 225/50 both 17". The 8" 122s will put more rubber on the asphalt and thus have better grip on dry tarmac while the skinier 7.5" 116s will cut better trough the snow. Anyone have any experience in this respect?

p.s. btw is any of the two wheels available as replicas?

 

What ever you do, don't go for replicas. I have heard a lot of sad stories about balancing problems and broken wheels.

I real winter tire should not be very wide. I suggest you go for 17" 225/50 and Continental ContiVikingContact3 or Nokian RSi tires!

 

Replicas tend to be a bit heavier and softer the latter, however, means they are easier to fix if curbed. Nokian are excellent on snow but poor on tarmac. Where I live we get a lot of dry winter days. Never heard of the Conti, will have to do some research.

 

Where do you live?

I could say I'm somewhat of on expert on the winter issue. You should see the winters overhere.

But as a matter of fact I drive 80% on wet or dry roads during the 5 month winter tire period.
The idea with winter tires is that when you need them, they should do the job! So do not forget the worst case senario, ice!

There are two kinds of spikeless winter tires. Those for semiwinter conditions and faster speeds and those for real winter contitions and speeds up to 170 km/h (approx 100 miles/hour).
I'm talking about these real winter tires.

 

I live in Bulgaria. Unkike Finland winter tyres and not obligatory here during the winter months as most places get about two or three weeks of snow per year. It gets quite cold though during the 4-5 winter months and most people use winter tyres (mostly the high performance variety) also because of their better adhesion properties when the temperatures are low. I personally have no experience of the real snow and ice spikeless tyres but have gathered that they are much noisier and behave poorly in the dry. I have gone through two sets of Dunlop M2 and M3s on my Subaru Impreza WRX and I am very pleased with their tarmac properties- good grip, relatively low noise and comfortably coping with speeds in excess of 200 km/h.

 

On the conturary. The spikeless winter tires has a softer rubber than summer tires and therefore are much, much more quiet.

But since you been driving around with a rally car you probable need the performace winter tires, but for real winter circumstances... as I wrote.
But they do preformace less good in dry conditions.

 

This is my winter setup.
I tried to buy a set of slightly used factory wheels from a 530i but that deal fell through. I ended up getting 18" x 8.5" BBS RK's (17 lbs +/-) all around. I've been very happy with them. The Michelin Pilot Alpins work very well!