Tires Falken or Continental
Absolutely great tires. I’ve used them year-round on other vehicles, and they are the best all-around performers I’ve encountered.
I have run the Conti DWS as my tire of choice on my previous Mk. 6 GTI and current 2016 R. I owned the GTI in Eugene, OR where we had a LOT of wet weather and snow was readily available close by or driving south to visit California.
This will be my third season with the DWS 06 on 18¨ Enkei Racing PF01 wheels on my 2015 R, same as my Michelin 18¨ PSS's are mounted on for summer use. As has been noted here by others these tires have performed extremely well, although not exposed to some of our extreme amounts of snow we've had recently.
I have had the Contis and the Michelins (on 18s). Both are great. Contis were way better in the wet in my opinion. The softer sidewalls also delivered a smoother ride, but gave a bit in performance (push/under steer).
I can add that I have Continental (Dealer supplied) 195 -65 - 15 on steelies on my 16 GSW. Using the electronic systems in the car, with 4 tall and narrow, winter tires, gives confident snow traction. Fuel mileage is not adversely affected and the noise level has not increased.
I just got some Continental ExtremeContact Sports and they're not too expensive but really nice.
The Conti Control Contact Sport A/S tire is one of the quieter tires out there and has excellent wet and snow weather traction. Being in Michigan, driving in the snow, this tire is better than almost all all-season tires in the snow. I highly recommend these for the Passat TDI.
Had good years on my '10 Routan. Meh. Very loud and very hard. Eventually purchased a set of Continentals -- oh my what a difference it made. I would not put anything else on the Routan. They look great and perform flawlessly. Highly recommended.
They were replaced with 205/65 X 15 Continentals on VW alloys (15X7) and after 15,000km still look like new, but they are noisy.
As for tires, I'd absolutely recommend against getting Conti DW's. I got them to replace Michelin PSS' mainly because they were cheaper and I thought the drop off in performance wouldn't be as significant as the price difference but it is...Very significant. For a chill family car, DW's are great..for any kind of performance driving, they just aren't good enough. Traction is ok but the sidewalls are very soft and I could feel them rolling and giving away at the track.
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