check out General Altimax Arctic tires, Im on my 3rd season and they have plenty of life left to them and made my E30 a champ in the snow.
Owner reviews for tires
I have lived in the snowiest city on earth (Valdez, AK) as well as the UP of Michigan and now in Maine and I've always used the Dunlop Winter Sport M3's with great results. I will keep using these (or Winter Sport 3D for larger wheels) as long as they make them.
I am running Dunlop wintersport 3D's on my Mk6 GTI and regularly take it through some really nasty stuff to go skiing here in CO. I will likely buy Dunlop winters again. They are my first winter tires, but they seem to perform well. They are on their 3rd winter, I think, and they still mange to get me around just fine. The only times I ran into issues was when I was trying to go up steep grades from a stop on very slick roads, but that is more to do with the lack of AWD than the tire. They also perform well in the dry, even on some of our testing mountain roads here.
I'm on my 4th set of blizzaks, and the new ws-80 are a huge improvement over previous versions. The older tires were terrible on dry/rain with a mushy feel. The WS-80 drive much more like an all-season. I drive aggressively, and these are very confidence inspiring no matter what the road surface is like. I took them out on snow/ice/slush for the first time last weekend and they were fantastic, not a single hiccup on the way to Mt. Hood Meadows.
On my MK VI R I run Hanhook Icept Evo's in the winter, they are a "snow" tire winter rated and all but they are also geared towards high performance. I feel very confident in conrnrs and such when its dry unlike some snow tires that are mush and don't handle well. In a car like the R it would be a shae to use a tire that doesn't allow the car to handle well when roads are dry or just slightly wet. the Icepts are a great snow tire. I have had zero issues wit their performance on snowy surfaces especially with the AWD you can basically go WOT from a stop in the snow and have no traction issues.
If you don't have a lot of actual ice and snow, the Dunlop Wintersport tires are fantastic. They're like a performance winter tire. I've had Nokian, Toyo, Bridgestone, Michelin, Dunlop - all have pro's and con's but for performance the Wintersport tires have been far superior as they still have excellent dry weather grip for aggressive driving.
The DWS seems to work fine in everything.
These I am running on my 7 R actually (225/40/18) and had them on my 6 R as well for the last winter. I can highly recommend this tire cause it's good in wet and snowy conditions and in addition very 'sporty' (for a winter tire) if you have dry conditions in winter. Probably the best winter tire I ever had.
i have them too. they run skinny and stretch well. they are a little noisy though.
From my experience, when the pirellis start to go, they suck quickly. Didn't realize how bad noise / vibration was @ 20k until I got new Hankook v12s.
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