Blizzaks and X-Ice are great tires but rather expensive, there are some great cheaper alternatives (General Tire Altimax Arctic)
I highly recommend General Altimax Arctic.
I ordered some General Grabber Arctic XL. They are studdable tires, so may not fit your needs. Mainly got them because I used to run General Altimax Arctic on my sportwagon and they've been great. If they perform similar to the Altimax they are pretty good on the pavement, and great in all bad weather conditions and last a long time.
The General Altimax Arctic is a previous gen Nokian design, and very good for the price.
Can go wrong with Nokians, in my opinion. I've had several sets on Saabs, my JSW, Touareg, and currently run studded Hakkepellitas on the wife's fwd GSW 5 speed. I ran General artic studdless on my GSW 4 motion 6 speed last winter and was pleased with the performance of those as well.
Agree on this but don't forget that General is owned by Continental so a lot of the same technology goes into their tires
Something I can personally recommend is the Hankook Ventus v12 Evo2. Great tire and around the same price as the firehawks. Going to perform a little better than the firehawk but not supposed to last as long. TireRack has the Hankooks listed as a "Max" summer tire with a life at ~20k miles(Firehawks tire life supposed to be around 30k). I've put just under 15k miles on them with 2 auto cross days and wouldn't be surprised if they lasted longer than 20k. Got them for $460 mounted and balanced, out the door.
Thats what I use and love em.
I have taken 3 tires to track events on my R: Dunlop ZII Star Specs, Bridgestone RE71R and Michelin PSS. I also ran version 1 Hankook RS3 tires on my BMW for both HPDE and autocross events. ZII Star Specs: excellent tread life (9-10 HPDE days @ ~2 hours track time/day), very good dry traction, good wet traction, wide temperature range RE71R: fair tread life (5 HPDE days), excellent dry traction, good wet traction, wide temperature range PSS: I used these for one event as a rain tire as my expectation is that they will not tolerate the sustained heat that a dry session will produce. Good dry traction, excellent wet traction, limited temperature range RS3: very good dry traction, unknown wet traction, limited temperature range; i.e.: they need lots of heat before they get sticky (craptastic for autoX) If I had to pick one tire for HPDE events, it would be the ZII's and that is what is currently on my car. Tires cost money and I value tread life over outright performance and the wear characteristics make the Dunlops about half the cost of the Bridgestones. If someone else is buying my tires, then I'll go with the RE71R's. For autocross use only in a street tire class, then the RE71R's, no question. i have not tried the BFG Rival or Rival S, but based on friends experiences I would expect them to be somewhat similar to the ZII and RE71R, respectively.
In the Northeast through a TERRIBLE winter with 4 Nor'easters in as many weeks the car was awesome even on the dodgy stock Hankook all seasons.
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