Even if your car has all-wheel drive, if you live in an area where winter temperatures get below freezing, it’s a good idea to get a set of winter tires. Switching them out with your summer tires each fall and spring can be annoying, but it’s a lot less annoying than ending up in a snow drift or rear-ending a car because you couldn’t stop in time. And generally, the best advice is to just get the Michelins. Regardless of what you drive, you really can’t go wrong with a set of Michelin tires.
But at the same time, Michelins aren’t exactly cheap. If you drive an old, inexpensive car, it can be hard to justify buying $1,000 worth of tires. And with so many less expensive options out there, it makes sense that people are going to be tempted to cheap out. Still, you don’t want to go too cheap and end up with a winter tire that actually performs worse in the cold than even a set of all-seasons. So what’s the right tire to buy for you?
Our friends over at Tyre Reviews recently tested eleven different winter tires to see how they stacked up. And then, just for fun, they added a summer tire and an all-season tire to the comparison. If you live in the U.S. like us, some of the tires they tested aren’t sold here, but there are enough tires in the test that are sold here to make the video still worth watching. And considering how poorly the Leao Winter Defender UHP performed, we can’t exactly say we’re disappointed it doesn’t appear to be available here.
In the end, it was essentially a tie between the Michelin Pilot Alpin 5s and the Bridgestone Blizzak LM005s, which isn’t really a surprise. But what was actually surprising was just how well Hankook did. Its Winter i*cept evo3s did an impressive job and may be worth considering since they’re so much cheaper than the top three tires. Also, somehow, its Kinergy 4S2s came in fourth place despite actually being all-seasons, not winter tires. It’s got to be embarrassing for the likes of Pirelli and Goodyear to see their winter tires outperformed by a set of all-seasons.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened in this test. Isn’t modern tire science fun?