Originally Posted By: Camprunner
Originally Posted By: CapriRacer
Not only can you pass the Mountain/Snowflake test without changing tread compound, the earliest tests performed with this test revealed a kind of glaring error - that some All Terrain tires and some All Season tires would pass the test without any changes. Since the intent of the test was to separate winter tires from non-winter tires, this was kind of an unintended, but expected, result - and by "expected" I mean the guys developing the test knew that this would happen as tread pattern has a great effect on snow traction.
So is it possible today to have lets say a truck A/T tire with no Mountain Snowflake rating actually do better in the snow then one with with the rating?
Probably there are, for A/T tires with a lot of sipes, putting the snowflake on the tire is a marketing decision more than anything.
On ice, consumer reports tests all all-season and winter rated tires the same way so I believe you can compare them directly. There are a few all-season tires that out perform A/T winter rated tires by quite a bit on ice.
I put some A/T winter rated tires on the CRV and they do work pretty well in snow, but on ice they are nothing special.
I guess the tire industry likes having a low threshold for winter rating tires, put it would make sense to have the test hard enough to mean something.