The Difference Between Summer And Winter Tires

The most important performance component of your car is a good set of tires. This doesn’t always mean summer tires for spirited driving either, if you live in a snowy area like myself you know about the importance of winter tires. When tires are built with a specific environment in mind they excel at giving you the necessary performance to help you take corners faster or conquer a snow cover road on your commute. When compared side by side Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained shows how the different tire designs of winter and summer tires help them achieve their very different goals.

A car is only as good as the tires it rides on, and choosing the correct set could be a matter of life and death. In today’s world of easy solutions, you may feel content to keep a car with all season tires that are only kind of good at everything. The danger of driving on no seasons lies in their compound formulation that does not have optimal grip at any temperature since they are expected to work year round. All season tires may seem like the frugal choice for someone who doesn’t plan to drive quickly or venture out in the snow but, using a two set system of summer and winter tires allows you to get the most out of your car. So many people fall into the trap of buying an SUV or AWD car and expecting it to work flawlessly in a winter weather situation. Just because all four wheels are driven doesn’t mean the tires are able to cope with low grip situations and a FWD vehicle with winter tires will do much better.

The same goes for performance driving where grip in the tires controls every component of performance from acceleration to cornering speeds. A car equipped with better tires will always be faster since it can carry more speed and accelerate harder. Good tires give you the greatest return on investment of any modification to your car improving every performance metric while being affordable. Some summer tires draw their inspiration from motorsport while the set featured in Jason’s video uses motorcycle tech to improve cornering grip.

Buying the correct set of tires is the most important thing you can do for your car. If you live in an area that experiences all four seasons it’s important to remember that all season tires will routinely let you down when you need them most. Using a one size fits all solution to such an important part of your car can put your life in danger and cuts down on its performance potential.