I think the choice of tires is very much related to where you live and how you drive your car. Personally, I'm very performance oriented, and I'm willing to give up tire mileage, ride comfort, and some stability for improved handling. When I lived in Southern California, for over 20 years I ran DOT R tires on my daily drivers, starting with Yoko A001R to A008R, Goodrich Comp T/A R, Yoko A032, Toyo R888R, Michelin Sport Cup, and a few others. It was necessary to be a bit careful when it occasionally rained, but other than that, and having to replace the tires in 10k miles or less in some cases, and often being somewhat noisy, they were great! Of course, I always had an SUV or truck with All Terrain tires for going out to the desert, offloading, or going anywhere it snowed.
Since I moved to Colorado over a decade ago, I had to totally change my tire selections. Even for my cars that only get driven on nice days in the summer, DOT R tires don't work. Often, the weather will be nice for half the day and then there will be thunderstorms, and many of these rain hard like what would typically only happen in SoCal once o twice a year. After a couple of scary trips where I could barely keep the car going straight at 30 to 40 MPH, I had to give up on them. I've found the Toyo R1Rs to be a pretty good compromise; they're very resistant to hydroplaning and still have a fair portion of the grip and feel of a DOT R tire. But I only run the R1Rs on my play car, not the daily driver.
For the first 5 or 6 years here, I did the summer/winter tire thing, typically PS4S and Sottozero 3. The problem with that is that during winter, it's not uncommon to have snow and temperatures in the 50s or 60s on the same day, and over the course of a week, it's typical for most of the winter to see these kind of variable conditions. We can get significant snowfall as late as May, one year early June
, and as early as October in the fall. Getting stuck somewhere with snow coming down and PS4S tires on the car is not pleasant. You just pray that you can keep the tire temps up and that a solid layer of snow/ice doesn't accumulate on the ground, because if it does, you're probably not making it home. On the other side of things, if you have the performance winter tires on, and it's a beautiful 60+ degree day out in December, and you decide to have some fun on a curvy road, it does very bad things to your tires, and they overheat and the fun comes to an end from a driving perspective as well.
So, I've tried a number of different all seasons over the years, and the better ones are dramatically better than all seaons of the past. The all season tires Tesla puts on the Model 3 at the factory are poor to fair overall. It's easy to find much better performing all seasons. There's also a big difference between all season tires, and the newer all weather tires. I've tried Michelin Cross Climate 2s and General AW365 tires in the all weather category, and they actually handled any weather thrown at them quite well. Even in snow and ice, there wasn't much of a difference between them and performance winter tires with regard to traction. There was a difference, but it was small to negligible. They also rode nicely and the Generals were extremely quiet. The problem with the all weather tires is the steering response and feel; it was pretty poor with both tires, unlike any performance tire, whether summer, all season, or winter. So, for the last couple of sets of tires that I picked up for our Model 3s, I decided to go with ultra high performance all season tires.
I've tried the Conti DWS06+, the Michelin All Season 4s, and Vredstein Hypertracs. Honestly, all three tires are very good, and the differences are fairly small between them. The Contis and the Michelins are so close together in almost every regard, that I'd just buy whichever is cheaper. The Vredsteins are a little bit different; they are noticeably better on snow and ice, and they give up a teeny bit in the dry. I'd also say that the Vredsteins are a little quieter than the other two, although I wouldn't consider any of them noisy. Compared to a top notch summer tire like the PS4S, they're down a bit on traction in the dry, call it 10%, but unlike the summer tires, they'll still get you around in ice and snow. There's a pretty big drop in snow and ice traction for these three tires compared to the all weather or winter tires, but in all but the worst conditions they'll get you home with a bit of careful driving. Also, all three of them are better in ice and snow than the average all season tire. Summer tires are terrible to somewhat terrifying even in small amounts of ice and snow. As soon as there's a layer on the ground that prevents the tire from contacting tarmac, they're nearly useless, and if they get too cold, they turn into rocks.
I think what I'd really like would be a performance all weather tire. Something that keeps the traction in all conditions of the current all weather tires, but has the steering response and feel of a performance tire.
Sorry about the length of the post, but I'm pretty passionate about tires.
toptirereview.com
