Winter tires

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

For performance winter driving get Pirellis, or Nokian NRW.

For out and out winter driving, deep snow, slush, ice, cold snow, cold ice, 
and especially glare ice, get Nokian Hakka Q.

Blizzaks are just an OK tire for winter. the originals were  a real 
confidence trick as only the top "half" of the tread was ice rubber, the 
remainder was generic all season crapola. A tire designed for one winter of 
great ice grip, so so snow and slush grip, followed by a summer of so so 
all season driving, and a following winter of VERY mediocre all season 
driving, before you caught on and bought real winter tires for winter and 
real summer tires for summer. Now Blizzaks come in several flavours but 
really offer nothing useful. Hakkas on the other hand give you the feeling 
you could drive up a frozen waterfall if you could just g\find a route.

For real world winter driving i e bare roads and cold weather with 
occasional hairy moments in deep snow and on ice, Pirellis just can't be 
beat. They work really well as a snow and ice tire but handle virtually as 
for a summer tire on cold bare pavement. Just take them off when the 
weather warms up otherwise they appear to melt away like winter ice.

This from another Rockies  driver, also a survivor of "prairie" winter 
driving. Remember the original square tread Continental Contacts, well I 
bought a set. Phenomenal for the time. Since then I've used everything from 
Michelin through Nokian (formerly Nokia) Gislaved, Pirelli, to a set of 
bloody awful Toyos on my current Aero.

Cheers



Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
91 Alfa 164L
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