Allybasher said:
Winter tyres are a waste of money over here in my opinion as it really only snows one or two weeks a year. If you have something competent like the Up you will cope anyway. Last year I parked the BMW and used my wife's Fox which was also brilliant in the snow.
Bit of a daft comment given people in this thread are talking about not taking their car out because it is snowing!
I've fitted Nokian W+ winter tyres to my Mii Sport. From mytyres, including a set of steel wheels, they came to about £320. And while I'm using my winter tyres, I'm not wearing out my summer
tyres. So the actual cost is pretty minimal - if you think they are a
waste of money, you've probably missed this point.
I've been perfectly mobile since the snow came last Friday - no concerns about getting stuck or sliding off the road. On Sunday, I went up an uncleared, 1-in-6 "private" road where the only other vehicle moved was some jacked up L200 (or something like that) which had enormous off-road tyres. Barely a hint of a slip from the driving wheels.
The problem with four wheel drive vehicles, which many 4x4 owners don't seem to understand (and my other car is a Volvo SUV), is that having four wheel drive doesn't give you miraculous powers of steering and stopping compared with two wheel drive cars. I'd rather be in a two wheel drive car on the right tyres than a four wheel drive car on the wrong tyres.
Germans cope perfectly well in the winters they have (much worse than ours) despite driving RWD BMWs and Mercs. The difference is that they have appropriate tyres for the circumstances.
As others have said, winter tyres are not just for snow - not sure why this confusion seems to be so prevalent in the UK. The Nokian website has quite a good explanation of this - the "Nordic" tyres you would use in constant snow in northern Scandinavia are different from the "European" tyres you would use in cold, frost, light snow, slush, etc that you get for a number of months in the UK.
As a rough rule of thumb, if the temperature is below 7C, winter tyres will have better grip than the summer tyres that are a ridiculous standard fitment for the UK. Most people use their cars in the morning (the commute) when temperatures are below 7C for something like 147 days of the year.