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.
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.
The Dunlop's really aren't a bad tire (Having done tire evaluation for SCCA to decide the spec tires for a few classes i've done quite a bit of performance tire comparison), in the dry I was more than satisfied with the grip of the Dunlop's, it is more than sufficient to suit the \"sportiness\" of the GLI.
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.
They did ok on the track for a summer tire (240tw) but I think next season I'm going with something else. For the life of me I could not corner in these
I got my WRX in March, near the end of the winter season. It snowed heavily one day, and I got stuck trying to go up my driveway because I only had the stock Dunlops. AWD was no replacement for winter tires.
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