Safe but quiet tyres?

KyleS1

I use Dunlop SportMaxx RT tyres and love them. It's surprising the difference the noise rating makes. Plenty grippy in all weathers and super quiet. A 1dB rating difference is massive. I think something like 3dB difference can mean twice as noisy.

The Dreamer

This guy reviews tyres in a really informative way - with the major point from almost all of his videos being, don't 'cheap out', it's dangerous! (edit: it's the same guy that runs the web-sites linked to earlier by others).

The only thing that bugs me about several (most?) reviews though, is that the graphs people tend to use, compress the scale along an axis to show just the difference between results - this often leads to it looking like the worst performing tyre is 10 times worse than the best - whereas, in percentage terms, it's often not that much really. Of course, we want to know which tyre performs best, and worst, and the graphs do show that - just not in the correct way.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tyre Reviews                                                                                                        All the latest tyre testing, tyre information and tyre advice from the leading source of tyre information in the world - TyreReviews!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                www.youtube.com                                                                               
So. Right now, one should have either all-weather/season, or winter tyres on their cars.

The Michelin cross-climates are a great compromise, and we have them on my wife's car. I used them on my Saab until I traded it in a few weeks ago; I fitted dedicated winter tyres to the 370Z last week (just in time it seems), which are Goodyear Gen-1's - an excellent European spec winter tyre. All-season tyres aren't available in the sizes needed on the big rims, so I bought a second hand set of smaller (18") rims from eBay - and stuck the winter tyres on them.

My lad also put on his winter tyres, we are moving over to Goodyears on that, but still have Bridgestones on the front, and Goodyears on the back for this winter (both winter tyres obviously - you must never mix winters with any other type of tyre)!

On the 4x4, we run Goodyear Wrangler all-seasons, year-round, which, like the cross-climates are a good compromise.

The Dreamer

...oh, and if you’re wondering whether the Michelin CrossClimates are as good as claimed....

AMc

Quite amused by that video - especially when he realises he's pushing the snow with the underside and hasn't got any way to turn around.  Not great planning...

We fitted CC to our Mini Cooper S a couple of years ago.
I had a family wedding to drive to in the North East - a good hundred miles away when the Beast from the East hit Norfolk.  
As the Golf had Pilot Sport I decided to give the Mini a try in the snow to decide which car was the best of two bad options to get 3 miles to the main roads and hopefully the final few miles to the country house hotel venue.

The Mini was going great guns including climbing a steep (for Norfolk) incline of snow to the bemusement of the parents supervising the sledging.  Then I got to a slightly more exposed, single track road...
I made a poor choice and attempted it when a smarter person would have turned around and headed home.  A few hundred yards in I realised that the bottom of the car and the front splitter where carving the centre of the lane, building up snow in front of the car and you could hear it underneath.  The snow being a LOT deeper than the initial tyre tracks indicated.  The car was going fine but I made mistake #2 and I lost my bottle and tried to reverse out.
That's the point I discovered the undertray was digging into the snow, lifting the front wheels.  At which point the car wouldn't go back any more... or forwards .  
Disabling the ABS/Traction control would let me spin the wheels but not enough to deal with the car being beached on the central section.  Just creating air around themselves.
I spent quite a long time trying to dig myself out and realising how stupid I'd been, discovering how quickly you can get really cold and tired digging snow in a blasting wind. Two blokes turned up on foot but we couldn't get moving forward or back.
I was on the point of abandoning the car to try to find a farmer, when a Defender on off road tyres turned up.  He pulled me out by the towing eye, basically sledging the car at 45 degrees with the wheels barely touching anything.
He'd gone out specifically to help clear the roads and had yanked 4 vehicles out in about 2 hours.

All the time I was walking distance from home and in no actual danger, but a very, very sobering experience. I can't help but feel those people in that A3 hadn't considered what they were doing properly either, unless they had another more suitable vehicle standing by out of shot to rescue the test car.

Just because your tyres can keep going, bear in mind the ground clearance too.
And if you don't need to go out in the snow, then don't!

You're all welcome to press the "Funny" emoji, I would

The Dreamer

I'm pretty sure that will be the limiting factor in my 370Z - and indeed, with all of the cars on our track to get to the road, but the Z more than most.

Usually, when it snows, I just clear two tracks with the snow-blower to allow the cars to get in/out - but every now and then I have to clear the centre too.

In years gone by (pre-snow blower days), the snow would build up so much, that ground clearance for even the 4x4's would be the limiting factor (and every household in our hamlet has at least one 4x4). We would have to get a local farmer to come and plough the track, at £80 a pop!

As far as getting cold - yes, a real problem, and why collapsible snow shovels, sleeping bags, and wellies, are kept in the boots of our cars over the winter - just in case. But it's just what people do in these parts - living on top of the Pennines means most people respect the weather.

After the Beast (we had been snowed in for 3 days - the first time in 20 years), we got out eventually, and pulled 3 cars out of drifts on our way to Hexham - two of them were 4x4's, a Rav4 and a Jeep Wrangler - the Rav was on standard tyres, so not really that surprising; the Jeep was on all-terrains, but just got trapped by drifts in front and behind, eventually having nowhere to go until the diggers cleared the road. So even the best 4x4's can struggle if the snow is falling thick and fast!

As you say - if you don't need to travel, then the best bet is to stay put. Unfortunately, people expect their GP's to get to them, come what may, so my wife always tries. And my company, bless them, asked me to give an official explanation as to why I didn't make it to work during a 'known weather event'!

I sent them a photo - and never heard anything about it again!