photo: bigcuthy

When I moved back to the East Coast a few year back, I anticipated winter driving, and leased an Audi A4 Quattro for my wife. In addition, prior to my first winter, I called a local tire shop about snow tires for my BMW - ‘Um, I dont think were gonna get that much snow this year bud’ the salesman said.

As it turns out, he was right - Southeastern Connecticut does not get much snow, and it melts pretty fast. As a result, I have only had to drive in it a couple of times. I am also flexible about when I drive, so I rarely ever have to drive in it anyways.

Which, partially, has been kind of a letdown, because when I used to live in NH, I could neither afford a decent snow car nor winter tires have the time, so I spent many white-knuckled hours behind the wheel of a Honda CRX-SI. I really wanted to show that snow who’s boss with some solid winter tires and/or AWD…

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Leading up to this move, I had done a lot of research on the web on snow tires vs AWD for winter driving. As many of you know, AWD is better for getting you out of a stuck situation (like having your parking spot plowed in), and general handling - but in terms of keeping you out of an accident, Snow Tires are where its at. An AWD car can slide just as well as a RWD at speed, its the tires that help avoid that as much as possible.

And what about tire chains? Well, you really dont need to worry about them unless, say, you live on an unplowed back road or something, or if you commute out west - Tahoe skiers frequently are required to put them on.

Now, I refer to them to Snow Tires, but more often then not they are referred to as Winter Tires, although some are better for snow and some better for ice, but usually the average driver will not be anticipating ice as often as snow.

Almong the available models, there are two that are fairly infamous for their performance nowadays - and that is the Bridgestone Blizzak and the Michelin X-Ice. Contrary to their names, however, both tires perform well on both snow and ice, and depending on who you ask, usually share the top 2 spots in any winter tire shootout. In general. the X-Ice seems more popular (probably because of lower price) but the Blizzak seems to have higher technical ratings and positive subjective reviews from owners.

Of course, there are other important factors to winter tires as well - they are noisy, a bit rough, and consume more fuel in day to day operation (which is significant since most of the time you will likely be on dry road) - plus, of course, cost.

Which choice you make depends on your local conditions and whats right for you.