Tires Uniroyal or Nokia
I had the Nokian all-season snow rated tires years ago on my Subaru STi, in the midwest, as my winter tire and loved them. They were not as soft as snow tires and performed very well in frigid temps on dry and wet surface, with the occasional heavy snow.
We have a base model with no snow mode, but I've had a set of Uniroyal Tiger Paw "Ice & Snow 3"'s on for the last few Winters, and they performed pretty well. I never felt unsafe, even driving through some pretty sketchy stuff.
Recently swapped out the horrendous oem Hankook street tires with Nokian Outpost nAT LT275/70r18. By FAR the best tires I’ve ever had on a vehicle. Actually more quiet than the stocks, better handling and lost no mpg’s.
They do fairly well on other terrains as well such as wet/mud/rocky/sand with my only minor complaint is that they love to pick up pebbles which tend to make an annoying tapping noise as they rotate
I ended up getting an Uniroyal summer tire for it as it was considerably cheaper than the Conti. Anyway, from tests I gathered that it is supposed to be top tier in wet condition and mid at best in dry. I have used for over a year now as my situation changed and ended up keeping the Corolla for the time being. I used it around 15k km so far in wide variety conditions, from 0 Celsius up to 40 and so far have zero issues. There is no sign of wear and tear, thread is still deep, no dry rot and driving never felt unsafe or had any other issues.
I went with Pirelli Cinturato Winter 2 -- they're decent.
Have had Hakkas on three prior vehicles as they've been my go to for years. Fantastic tires! Wanted them on the S3 but when I saw them in store I was shocked by the softness of the compound and was worried about treadwear.
Nokian Hakkapellitas if you've got the budget for them.
Blizzaks never failed me on my FWD Volvo V70 in the Rocky Mountains. Made it up Wolf Creek Pass in February through at least a foot of snow
I have Nokian WRG5s on mine. The first set lasted 89,000 km - right to what they were supposed to. The new ones are rated good until 100,000. I've only got about 15,000km on these ones so too early to tell but tread depth is good.
You can take a bigger hit in tires alone. For instance, on my stock ContiProContacts, I average 27 mpg with 235/50r18 tires. Same size but with Nokian Z-line A/S, a tire that grips the road much better wet and dry, I'm lucky to hit 25 mpg, usually more like 22 mpg.
Hope you have a better experience with the Outpost AT’s than I did. Just pulled them off my WK2 Grand Cherokee and disposed of them after 15K. Either way had substantial cracking and dry-rotting in-between treadblocks and violent shaking that went away with new Destination AT2’s.
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