We Test Snow Tires To Dispel Common Winter Driving Myths…On Ice! – EMBARGO’D FEB 1

For those who live in four-season climates and frequently experience winter weather, prepping for Mother Nature’s worst is all but an unfamiliar routine. It typically prompts discussions among car owners, which often broach common techniques that people “should do” to improve the safety of their winter driving. Some of these common techniques include adding weight to the back of your vehicle, airing down tires, or even going as far as claiming that snow tires are an unnecessary and frivolous expense when your vehicle has four- or all-wheel drive.

But do any of these common tips hold any truth or water to them, or are they just myths and misconceptions? eBay Motors invited us out to a winter driving test convention at Yellowstone Airport in Montana to demonstrate how truly effective snow tires really are. Comprising four different snow-packed road courses featuring two examples of four different vehicles, each with their stock all-season or performance tires and one with dedicated snow tires, we went to work to put these myths and misconceptions to the test.

Testing Myth Number 1: “I Don’t Need Winter Tires, All-Seasons Are Just Fine.”

One of the most common myths for winter-season driving is that all-season tires are good enough and negate the need for winter tires. While somewhat true, it depends largely on how severe the winters get in your neck of the woods. There are exceptions, particularly for those who’ve owned and experienced great snow tires, or if you live in a climate where it only snows a couple times out of the year, then sure, all-seasons may be just fine.

But if you live in a region where heavy snow is a common occurrence and snow- and ice-packed roads coat your local roads throughout the season, then snow tires are an absolute must. That’s because all-seasons may be okay in most situations, but they’re not great in extreme conditions, such as living high in the Rocky Mountains or up in our northerly Canadian neighbor.

To demonstrate, eBay Motors set up a moose-avoidance test on a packed snow course on one of the taxiways. The test mules: two front-wheel-drive Chevrolet Blazers, one with its factory Continental CrossContact LX Sport all-seasons, the other with Continental Viking Contact 7 winter tires. The exercise being, you’re driving along as per your normal business and out of nowhere, a moose steps in your path. Instinct calls to brake and steer aggressively in an evasive maneuver to avoid hitting said moose.

Once up to about 20-25 MPH, the driving instructor then announced either a “left” or “right” turn to simulate this abrupt evasive maneuver. In the test, the Blazer with the CrossContact LX Sport all-seasons clearly suffered in the grip department, resulting in poor steering response and an inability to truly avoid the obstacle. In which case, if it were an actual moose avoidance maneuver, it may have led to a severely damaged vehicle and an injured 1,000-pound animal. As expected, the Blazer with the Viking Contact 7 snow tires performed exponentially better, yielding impressive grip, steering response, and control, allowing a much better result when trying to maneuver around the obstacle.

Testing Myth Number 2: “Deflating Tires In Snow Can Improve Traction And Negate The Need For Winter Tires.”

If you’ve hung around anyone involved with the activity of four-wheeling or off-roading, they’ve probably advised you to deflate your tires in winter weather driving conditions to “increase the contact patch” of the tire, which in theory, improves traction. This may sound like logical advice since off-roaders often air down their tires when treading on loose or wet ground such as sand, mud, and even snow.

However, the same principle doesn’t necessarily apply to all-season tires, specifically in snow and winter applications. That’s because the compound, or the composition of the rubber material in the tire, suffers from stiffening due to cold temperatures, which inhibits the malleability of the tire and its ability to grip.

In a short slalom and straight-line acceleration-and-braking test on hard-packed ice, we drove two front-wheel-drive Toyota Camry SEs, one with a set of stock-equivalent Yokohama ADVAN Apex v601 all-seasons aired down by several pounds-per-square-inch, the other with Yokohama iceGUARD IG53’s at stock pressure.

In this case, the iceGUARD’s clearly showed its advantages over the aired-down all-season ADVANs with significantly greater amounts of grip and responses, proving that airing down doesn’t quite make much of a difference with all-season tires. Not only did the iceGUARD enable more grip and allow us drivers to hit up to 45 MPH on the straight before braking, but they also resulted in shorter braking distances visibly by roughly 10-20 feet. When piloting the Camry with the ADVAN all-seasons, it struggled to maintain grip in the slalom, understeering past the second cones before the acceleration-and-braking test.

Testing Myth #3: “Rear-Wheel Ddrive Cars Are Horrible And Can’t Drive In The Snow.”

Rear-wheel-drive cars often get a lot of slack for being unable to perform in winter conditions. But this could not be further from the truth as most situations involving a “rear-wheel-drive car performing terribly in the snow” come down to the incorrect tire for the conditions. Rear-drive layouts are often associated with performance and sports cars, such as the pair 2023 Porsche 991 Carrera Cabriolets being used in the third test: A quick figure-eight snow-cross course.

These performance-oriented cars often come with dedicated summer or warm-weather performance tires that simply turn rock-hard when temperatures drop below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. To demonstrate, the first stint involved trying to get one of the 991s with its factory-specified tires to line up at the course’s starting line for the lesson. But to no surprise, with its stock Pirelli P-Zero PZ4 ultra-high-performance summer tires, the first 991 barely moved several feet, struggling to get any sort of grip whatsoever without the help of someone pushing.

The other sported Pirelli’s Winter Sottozero Serie II winter tires and quite simply, it was a night-and-day experience. The 991 with the Sottozeroes was able to put its power down from its potent flat-six, which then easily translated into a few dancing laps of fully controllable sideways figure-eights on the designated course.

Testing Myth #4: “Adding Weight To My Pickup’s Bed Is As Good As Snow Tires.”

If you’re a pickup truck owner, chances are you’ve heard the “common trick” of putting extra ballast, or weight, in your truck’s bed to help improve grip when driving in winter conditions. It may sound like a lot of sense, as all pickup trucks suffer from a forward-biased weight distribution due to the placement of an open bed over the rear axle. The trick being extra ballast helps weigh down the rear of the truck to improve grip.

But this myth was debunked in our last test featuring two Ford F-150 EcoBoost 4x4s, one with its Bridgestone Dueler A/T RH/S all-terrain tires and about 600 pounds of added ballast, and the other with zero extra ballast and a set of Bridgestone’s legendary Blizzak DM-V2s. In this exercise, the driving coach instructed us to attempt a lap a roughly half-mile snow course circuit that looped around the apron of Yellowstone Airport’s Runway 01.

Beginning with seat time in the F-150 with its stock Duelers, to little surprise, yours truly ended up high-centered in a snowbank after suffering from excess speed and limited grip from the Duelers. But once behind the wheel of the second F-150 equipped with the Blizzaks, and no extra ballast in the bed, it clearly gripped the loose and packed snow far better than the all-terrain Duelers, proving that the extra weight doesn’t really make an impact, particularly if your truck is still on all-season tires.

Tire Construction Makes Snow Tires Effective in the Winter

Not all tires are created equal. Much like the wide variety of footwear available for various outdoor human activities, tires are synonymous to being your vehicle’s shoes. For instance, you wouldn’t go hiking up some rocky mountain trails in a pair of beach flip-flops versus a rugged pair of Timberland boots, or running in golf shoes as opposed to a dedicated set of endurance running kicks.

The principal is the same with tires. Not only do they come in all shapes and sizes, but many are engineered for different specific applications and climates. That’s why tires are categorized depending on the conditions they’re built for, such as all-season, summer, winter, racing, and off-road tires. Variations include differences in the tread pattern, material composition, shape, durability, and pliability.

Much like the wide variety of footwear available for various outdoor human activities, tires are synonymous to being your vehicle’s shoes.

For instance, summer tires are often composed of harder rubber as they’re engineered to perform in warmer climates and become softer as they heat up to improve grip on paved surfaces. Winter tires, on the other hand, feature softer rubber compositions as cold weather typically causes rubber and polymer materials to harden, which is not good for cold weather performance.

Tread patterns also vary to assist in performing in adverse weather conditions, such as being able to disperse water as the tire patch rolls over a surface, which prevents hydroplaning, or featuring special sipes within the tread to help grip in snowy conditions. It’s crucial to be mindful of all these details when considering a new set of tires for your vehicle, as they can your safety on the road and in inclement weather. But more importantly, these tests also prove how much difference snow tires really make.

eBay Motors paid for TopSpeed to attend its winter driving event. Neither the author nor TopSpeed received or will receive any monetary compensation in any form for this article or from any links therein.