All season tires
 

Just had our first snow (really ice) storm in Triangle area of NC and my FR-S was virtually undriveable. I know there have been other threads, but what I'm interested in, now that people have almost half a winter, is recommendations for mid-priced (around $150) all season tires for my car.

all season tires are more like 3 season tires, they are not suited for winter snow and ice.

Any all season will be bad in snow and useless on ice.

Even snow tires aren't that great on pure ice but obviously a lot better than all seasons.

Best bet would be not to drive during ice or leave before it starts if you have to run all seasons.

I use Continental DWS in staggered fitment in NY and have been fine in our 1 inch snows. From user reviews I've seen this is the best performer in snow all season tire. No heavy accumulations this year but they won't do well in more than a few inches just like any other all season.

http://www.tirerack.com/images/tires...tdws_ci2_l.jpg

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....omCompare1=yes

All season tires are junk.




Junk!

Especially on a RWD car. You would see no improvement on snow, only a loss of performance in the dry.

Yes they are junk but in his location it might be a waste of money for snow tires for the amount of time he is going to see snow.

You will see an improvement in snow all season vs summer.

All seasons will not help you on ice. If you're going to get a set of tires for the winter, get winter tires.

Blizzaks would be my recomendation for snow tires, but they wear quickly if driven on pavement often. Should be able to get 2 winters out of them.

This +a bajillion. Having grown up in north central IL and having to deal with the winters there, best thing you can do is get home before it gets bad. The best driver in the world still can't avoid the one driver near you that panics when their car starts to slip and they don't know how to handle the car to recover.

Where I live it snows rarely. I'm old, have driven rear, front & all wheel drive cars for 50 years and know about the strengths and weaknesses of all season tires. I'd appreciate recommendations for a decent all season tire so that I can drive around in the light, infrequent snow I get here without the complete lack of traction that my summer tires provide. Thanks.

Continental DWS ^^

I've driven all-seasons in a front wheel drive sedan. Tire Rack does a pretty good service of rating the performance of tires in snow and ice. While all-seasons will never come close to matching a set of dedicated snow tires in snow and ice, the best of them offer performance that is a significant bump up from ordinary tires in light snow conditions. Your first effort should be to stay off roads until they are cleared, then to drive with a true granny mentality until roads are cleared. The FR-S's summer tires turn to bricks at under 40 degrees. For the record, I used the highly-rated Michelin Exalto A/S all-seasons on a fwd car through a New England winter, and they were pretty decent.

I'm planning on replacing the stock tires with a pair of Kumho's like these:
Kumho Ecsta's on Tirerack

at some point. Their included road hazard warranty seems to be decent too.

Edit - the more I read about the Continentals, the more I am liking them ...

I second the Conti's. Doesn't quite apply here, but I used them on a WRX year round with great success.

I've had a different version of those Kumho tires, the Kumho Ecsta ASX on my IS300, and they were absolutely terrible in the snow. They were a bit low on tread (4/32nd) though, but they weren't great in the rain either. I've heard good things about the Continental DWS.