Originally Posted By: moto94536
fsskier is right, he say 2wd with ice tires, then 4wd with all seasons tires as a second and much poorer choice - and also much more expensive.
4wd with ice tires will both keep you on the road and make you go if cost is no object!
I am thinking about buying my first winter tire for the awd. what do you think about michelin ice xi2 ? also Iowa vs Penn St college football. I think Iowa will win.
OK, first things first: Go Hawks! My entire family either attended/taught at/graduated/faculty/employed/retired from U of Iowa, so just wanted to make that clear.
Both my son and I have gone to the mountains annually for 30+ years snowskiing, running many different brands of winter tires...Sears (one of the first genuine ice tires sold widely in the US, beginning around 1980) Yokohama, Dunlop and Michelin.
Let me say that NO test ever seems to reveal how much better they really are on wet, "packy" snow. The kind that gives you fair traction until you spin, and then seems frictionless. The ice tires all seem to lose nearly nothing in the packed and stopped spot that the vehicles around you are trapped in.
Last year we skied Crested Butte and Telluride, then I left for a day at Wolf Creek Pass. Of course the famous "Wolf Creek record snowfall" was coming down.....28 inches in 24 hours, all wet and very packy. My wife's car.... a 2007 Corolla with Michelin X1-2s, 3 years of service was slowed by a new AWD Ford Edge that eventually spun to a stop exiting from a steep Hairpin. Then, the next hairpin revealed a long line of stalled 4WD vehicles, pickups, SUV's, etc. A stopped vehicle had brought them to a stop and none could start out again, some were attempting to turn around, others were chaining up. An opening occurred, I popped the clutch and pulled out and passed the whole works and proceeded to the top... followed by a clapped out old Honda Prelude, also running ice tires. Yes, I said popped the clutch.... you soon learn that genuine ice tires loose nearly nothing even after wheel spin occurs, unlike regular tires that seem to lose all.
No, I did not ski that day, visibility at the top was about 50 feet maximum, the parking lot was chaos so we continued on down the other side.....many vehicles running into the guardrails at each hairpin, braking locked the tires and prevented steering....
4WD vehicles that had made the top without ice tires were now impaled into guard rails.....
Sorry for the lengthy story..... just saying "ice tires are good" without real life examples does not really add much value.
Also, I am not anti 4WD, just the use of it as a primary defense against snow and ice, it should be secondary to good tires. My son has a Subaru Outback AWD with Michelin X1-2's on it.... it is amazing...... seems almost like you could chase a squirrel up a tree with it, even on show! He and his family nearly always accompany us on our winter adventure... but had gone a different direction home.
