Originally Posted by dparm
Originally Posted by supton
If WFH ever comes to an end I should get a ride in my coworker's Stinger. He seems to like it. Err, it is AWD but he does drive it in winter, so there's that. [Don't recall what winter tires he got, but he had to, I recall him getting nervous as he has the performance summers that might crack in cold temps.]
Tire cracking is only an issue in the most extreme performance tires (think R-compound or near-R-compound). A Pilot Super Sport will not fall apart if it gets below freezing, they will just get very hard -- meaning faster wear and noisy. The biggest problem is that those tires cannot evacuate snow from the tread, meaning you will spin hopelessly and have no control.
North Texas does get near freezing or even below for a handful of days every winter. I have driven summer tires in those temps plenty of times. The grip is poor but they still work.
If you read the fine print even the UHP tires (BFG sport comp2, Firestone Firehawks, etc) have low temp restrictions. Some say not even to store them below freezing... I ran my sport comp2's around freezing a few times and they took a mile or two to become round, but didn't crack at the time, but at the end of their life they started chunking off pieces of the shoulder tread. Related? maybe but they also saw a quite a few autocrosses.