Most liked posts in thread: Apparently, winter traction is an option box I forgot to check

Reminds me, I have a set of Yokohama AVS ES 100s sitting in my parents garage, I wonder if those are any good? Or if they will even fit on my mini. As I recall they were 17x7.5 where my Mini wheels are 17x7.

 

Those are old tires. My guess they are well past their use by date. I had a set on my Miata & they did not live a long life. They got hard & noisy before I wore them out.

 

The TT always wore them out, but that was also a really heavy car for its size. But I would imagine they are dry rotted by now. I shoulda sold them off to the VW guys after the TT met its untimely demise.

 

My snowtires went 6 winters. Probably could have stretched them to 7 if I didn't put all them highway miles for work last spring.

Still, even cheap inexpensive snowtires are better than 3 season tires in cold snowy climates.

 

In my previous R53, I had always run winter tires and just assumed that MINIs were great in the snow. Then I bought a R52, gave away my winters in favor of a newer set on wheels that didn't fit my car. I figured ID just run my all seasons until they were dead and then swap tires to those wheels.

Let me the you, those tires were garbage in the snow a couple of weeks ago. Terrifying. Granted the all seasons had 35k ormore in them, but needless to say I had the winters put on the next weekend. Massive improvement. I've had the blizzaks and arctic alpin's and they are both fantastic. I'll never be without winters again here in Cincinnati.

 

My '06 MCSa has 15" Blizzaks during the winter. My '03 MCcvt and my wife's stock '06 MCSa have all seasons all year around. I only drive the last two when the weather is above 40 degrees. The Blizzaks are for snow and ice only and, consequently, I am hoping to get at least the average snow tire life out of them.

On the otherhand, when I was 16, I had a '59 Morris Mini Minor [the "first" Mini] with 10" wheels and Dunlop Gold Seals that were driven all year around in NE Ohio. It was much lighter and far less powerful than today's MINIs, but I got around just fine back then, typically in 6-8" snow. To say that the Mini is not a winter car without snow tires is, IMHO, bullcrap. The original Minis were built as economy cars for English weather. What matters most is how you drive the car.

 

Only last winter I got up a snow-covered hill by reversing up it when I couldn't get enough traction, even on winters, to do it forwards. Worked a treat and I got a round of applause from some folk who came out of a house halfway up to watch me do it, as apparently it "wasn't possible even for a 4WD".

It took a while, as it was only one car wide - reversing a Roadster in poor visibility up a narrow winding snow channel involves a lot of reversing into the bank on one side or the other and then having to roll forwards before trying again.....

But I felt properly stupid when I got to the client's house on the top of the hill and she pointed out that if I had driven 10 miles further on the (ploughed) main road and then approached her house from the other way on the same minor road, there wasn't a steep hill!

 

This made me think of my favorite snow tire story. People used to only use snows on the drive wheels. Our family had an MG 1100 sedan in the 60's. My dad took it in to have snow tires put on it. When they brought it out the snow tires were on the rear.:wink:

 

I know my R53 MINI works decently without snowtires. The last time AMVIV was held in March, I drove there with summer HP tires on, not expecting to see much snow.



However, normally in the winter, I do have snowtires on.