In praise of winter tyres

A snowy house and car this morning

This is my third winter with a rear-wheel-drive car (and one with high-performance tyres). It’s not that I have a high-performance car, but because it’s a BMW, they fit high-rated tyres with a sports tread.

Great for grip on warm tarmac, but combined with rear-wheel drive, pretty useless for the two weeks of an English winter when it snows.

And snow it has for the past two winters! I almost had winter tyres fitted last year, but the snow was quite late - February - and I thought I’ll only have the tyres on for a few weeks before it was spring.

This year, we’re taking the car to the Isere Valley for a skiing holiday and so I decided to have winter tyres fitted good and early.

KwikFit had the option of some really cheap winter tyres (made in Italy) at about £100 each, some Japanese-made tyres at £150 each or Dunlops (made in Germany) at £223 each. KwikFit said they were all good, but the Dunlops looked to have a much better tread pattern and they were on a four-for-three offer, so I had them fitted. Total price, with wheel balance, new valves and nitrogen inflation (and VAT) £721.

It’s expensive, but it should (of course) be cost neutral. When I have the winter tyres on, I’m not wearing out my summer tyres, so I’m saving there. I can only wear out one set at a time.

Anyway, a nice young lady tyre-fitter put them on, did a good job of cleaning the corrosion from the front, offside alloy wheel which always lets a bit of air out around the rim, and I slung the summer tyres in the back and stacked them in the garage ready for refitting come April.

I could feel a difference straight away. The ride was better because I was now on standard tyres, not run-flats like my summer tyres, which have a much stiffer sidewall. I’ve not noticed any difference in fuel consumption (around 40-45mpg) and the tyres don’t sound any noisier on a motorway.

We’d not had a bad winter, wet but not too cold, until this past fortnight and the tyres have now really come into their own. The grip had been noticeably better when the road is cold and wet, or a little frosty. I hit a patch of ice on Bourges Boulevard heading to the station the other morning. On the summer tyres, it would have really let go and then gripped, but with the winter tyres it was a steady slide, I could feel it going and correct every so gently. A similar thing happened coming off the roundabout onto The Causeway into Thorney. I just felt the back end coming round ever so slightly; I just eased off and it came back in line.

On Friday it snowed heavily and Chestnut Drive was covered in snow. Coming home from the station, I put my foot down in second to see if the wheels would spin, but they didn’t. The traction-control light didn’t even flicker. On summer tyres, it would have been on/off, on/off. I then tried braking quite hard, not an emergency stop, but so hard that I knew the standard tyres would have lost grip. The car just stopped, no judder at all to suggest the ABS had kicked in.

I thought this was quite impressive on two or three inches of snow.

The tyres are not going to tempt me into taking risks, but if I know I have reliable grip, I will drive a bit faster. Is that lulling me into a false sense of security? It might be, but only if the grip suddenly goes, which it would on ice, but then so would any tyre, except a studded one.

On Sunday, heavy snow was forecast in London, spreading north during the afternoon. We’d planned to go to Sam’s and did so despite the weather. It was his 30th birthday on Thursday, we had his presents and I’d baked him a cake. It was quite snowy on the way down and continued to snow heavily all afternoon. We left about 4pm, with roads starting to whiten over. On the hill from Stroud Green to Crouch End, I was being followed by a VW 4x4 and when I stopped to let a bus through, I saw him brake and lose control. Fortunately, he steered sideways into the kerb and not into my back. From Crouch End up to Muswell Hill there is (as the name suggests) quite a steep hill. The road was fairly clear and I took it steadily in second at about 20mph. It’s a narrow road with traffic parked and side roads, plus crossings, so it’s not a hill you can take a run at.

Halfway up a BMW saloon had stopped, its rear wheels spinning uselessly and sliding slowly back down. I was able to slow and steer around it. We passed a Mercedes which had also given up and was being gamely pushed by a couple of blokes (good luck to them). Steering around these obstacles had slowed me down, so I had to engage first and was now stuck behind a front-wheel-drive Peugeot 3009, which had also lost momentum and it was slithering about like a dog on wet lino, front-wheels spinning like mad. I was worried because the hill is steeper there, so I fed the clutch in slowly and kept the throttle as low as possible. The car sailed up, no traction-control light, absolutely no wheelspin.

On the A1, there was a fine covering of sometimes slushy, sometimes soft, sometimes crunchy snow. I know from experience, that I would have had to slow right down on the summer tyres and would have been having kittens even then. I was nervous, but nowhere near so much, and had to be alert because visibility wasn’t great, but the car was rock solid - no side slides, no skidding under braking (ABS didn’t kick in once) and no wheelspin.

Some people’s winter driving skills are dreadful. People drive too close, some folk just have no idea about how long it will take them to stop or how to avoid wheelspin. The VW driver was an idiot, thank god me missed me; the Peugeot driver was being much too heavy on the throttle, but having used winter tyres myself and felt the difference they make, I’d say with confidence that, if everyone fitted them, the BBC would have to look really, really hard for some video of a car spinning its wheels and having to be pushed started.

And why wouldn’t people fit them? It’s no extra cost long term. You’ll really notice the difference when it’s snowy, but even in cold or cold and wet conditions, winter tyres significantly shorten your stopping distances in an emergency. I’m a convert; I’ll be at KwikFit every October getting my winter rubber on.

They may have a harsher test in the French Alps, where we have a very steep road up to our chalet, but I’ll have a secret weapon in the glovebox - my AutoSock. I hope I don’t need it, but if I do, I’ll give a full report.