(/quote "Still very curious about the winter performance of the Zline. [/quote]
I guarantee the Zline is deadly in Winter conditions! I just went out once briefly in very light snow and felt I was on a skating rink!
The Zline AS is another story, I drove in a couple inches of fresh snow and while it was easy to force the Traction Control into operation the tire was not treacherous. The slight siping & different rubber compound seem to have made it a much better 3 Season tire. I live on the E edge of lake effect snow belt in Central NY and am not comfortable with anything less than a good snow tire. I use Nokian R2's on my wife's '09 Rabbit & my AUDI A6 Avant. This past winter was my daughters 1st and after a brief excursion into a ditch on glare ice with her 1/2 tread R2's I bought her a set of Studded Nokian Hakapelitta 9's since she's the only one in the family with work & school timelines to meet! I was very surprised to see how much quieter they are than than the old Hakka's. On my iPhone DB meter they read about 68-69db at 65 MPH and the R2's run the meter up to 65 DB at 65 mph, both on AUDI A6 Avants, '07/'08.
I guarantee the Zline is deadly in Winter conditions! I just went out once briefly in very light snow and felt I was on a skating rink!
The Zline AS is another story, I drove in a couple inches of fresh snow and while it was easy to force the Traction Control into operation the tire was not treacherous. The slight siping & different rubber compound seem to have made it a much better 3 Season tire. I live on the E edge of lake effect snow belt in Central NY and am not comfortable with anything less than a good snow tire. I use Nokian R2's on my wife's '09 Rabbit & my AUDI A6 Avant. This past winter was my daughters 1st and after a brief excursion into a ditch on glare ice with her 1/2 tread R2's I bought her a set of Studded Nokian Hakapelitta 9's since she's the only one in the family with work & school timelines to meet! I was very surprised to see how much quieter they are than than the old Hakka's. On my iPhone DB meter they read about 68-69db at 65 MPH and the R2's run the meter up to 65 DB at 65 mph, both on AUDI A6 Avants, '07/'08.