Modern tires are amazing but they are also confusing when it comes time for replacement.  Now if you drive middle of the road as far as your style, or as far as your automobile is concerned, you’ll want a tire like this.

This tire is designed to give you the best of both worlds - wet traction, dry traction, good wear - all of the attributes that you would want out of a tire.  Now the way to do that is with a different tread compound and a different tread design from one side of the tire to the other.  That gives you the combination of attributes for that tire.  It’s also an all-season tire.

But maybe you want something that is a little more aggressive as far as the handling aspects go.  That means you step up to something like this.  Now this is a summer only tire.  But it has special features for handling, and that includes this big rib in the center which gives you good on-center response.  The tread is designed for good traction - both wet and dry, but it is not useable in snow or icy conditions.

Now also, maybe you’re real serious about performance.  That means you might want a tire like this.  As you may notice, as we get higher in performance, we get less detail in the tread.  In this case, this is a D-O-T approved tire, so you can use it on the street, but it is primarily designed for the track - drifting and things like that.  So if you are into that, this is what you look for.

And if you are in a part of the country where you get snow, here is a dedicated snow tire.  Now you notice that this is a very complex tread design.  Lots of little cuts - syps they’re called.  Lots of blocks and so on so the tire grips into the snow and the ice.  It also cleans itself so it doesn’t pack snow on it and become a giant snowball.  The downside to these is that you can’t use them in the summer because they wear quite rapidly, and that’s due to the tread compound that’s designed to bite into the snow and ice.  But if you want best winter traction, that’s the way to go.   


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