![]() Just as tires have improved their performance in the dry, they have also improved in snow and ice. Getting a 3PMSF tire to return decent wet grip while not wearing like balsa wood under 100-grit sandpaper was a eureka moment for the tire industry. Also, wet traction and cold traction are what the industry calls a target conflict, meaning that if you want wet grip you must give up cold grip and vice versa. The rubber compounds used for dedicated winter tires are not designed for warm weather and will wear at elevated levels when driven above certain temperatures. ![]() Tire warranty is one of the most important factors consumers should consider when buying replacement rubber. One of the newest all-weather tires to make it to the United States is the BFGoodrich Advantage T/A Sport LT, which comes with a warranty of 60,000 to 65,000 miles, making its warranty competitive with even some non-3PMSF all-seasons. For what it’s worth, the only all-season tires you can find in Europe are these all-weather tires. This is ideal for some markets where winter-tire use is compulsory, like Quebec and many northern European countries. Yeah, it is vague, but it is a laboratory test that actually tells consumers more than an M+S marking (also seen above), which is just a calculation of tread geometry.Īll dedicated winter tires have the 3PMSF, but an all-weather tire is suitable for winter conditions yet doesn’t necessarily have to be swapped on and off every winter and spring. This symbol is a seal of approval of sorts that indicates the tire has been tested and it is capable of at least 110 percent of the traction of a reference all-season tire (for the nerds, the standard is ASTM E1136-14). ![]() What denotes an all-weather tire versus an all-season one is a small pictogram on the sidewall known as the three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF), pictured above. Fortunately for those folks, in the last couple of years a new subset of all-seasons has emerged: the “all-weather” tire. ![]() But not everyone switches to dedicated winter rubber in the cold months, instead relying on all-season tires to get through snow, ice, slush, and just plain cold weather. And in places like our home state of Michigan, the beginning of fall often means thinking about getting one’s car (or in our case, our long-term test fleet) ready for snow, i.e., new winter tires. If you live somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, cold weather is an annual reality.
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