[s-cars] Quick Tyre Fitment Question

[Taka Mizutani]

Dave, Lee-
Maybe it depends on the type of snow you get- wet slushy stuff vs. dry
powder.

I was running 225/45R17 Nokian NRW snows on the 200 as well as the STi and
they're way too wide
for either car- the car gets really loose in the corners, doesn't have good
traction. I know
that on a 3300lb. car like the STi, these are definitely too wide, but even
on a 3650lb. car
like the 200, it was too wide. That said, 225/45R17 snows work fine on the
3900lb. V70R.

I would not run anything wider than 205/50R17 on a lighter car than the
V70R. We get very
heavy, wet, slushy snow for the most part around here, and the narrower
tires seem to cut
through this stuff a lot better- wide tires tend to "float" on the slush,
making it really scary
when you get unexpected power oversteer in a torquey car.

To compensate for the narrower footprint, if you're in the type of
conditions we get in the lower
Northeast, I'd run something like the Nokian WR or Dunlop M3, a
"performance" snow tire, so
that the dry and wet grip are not so severely compromised that it totally
ruins the fun of driving
the car.

The el-cheapo Hankook snows I have on the Miata are horrible in the dry and
the wet, they do
fine in real snow, though.

If you insist on running 225/50R16 on a 8" wide wheel, that's the correct
size. I would personally
run 7" wide wheels for snows, though.

I don't have any real experience with fresh dry powder and driving around on
the stuff, so please
DISREGARD my comments if you're in a totally different climate (like the
Colorado conditions that
Dave describes).

Taka