If I had to choose between the Kumho, the Dunlop and the Goodyear, I'd pick the Dunlop.
Both are not at the top of the current offerings...but the ZII is better than the NT05. Make sure you have a sprayer to keep them cool because grip falls off a cliff once they get hot.
I don't shave tires, and I ran 150+ runs and a few thousand street miles easily on my Z2s last year. They still have life left in them.
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.
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.
Drove in the rain with the Dunlop Saturday. The traction control came on a few times, but I think its due more to the amount of low-end torque the GLI makes. Now it wasn't difficult to drive, just watch how much throttle you give it.
Below 40F the tires get hard and lose grip. Add a little bit of snow and they are slick as fuck. The awd helps but the overall loss of traction makes driving sketch as fuck.
Stock Dunlops are garbage. I barely got 17kish out of mine and they were at 3/32".
I'm on ZII's on my "street wheels" and while they're fine for around town, I've never liked them from a performance perspective. Compared to the purpose built 200TW cheater tires (e.g. RE71R, RT660, RS4) the ZII's give up a LOT of grip and probably seconds per lap at a racetrack.
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