What tires should I buy

I need to replace all 4 tires on my 2005 Honda CR-V. I want a 80,000 tires with great wet and snow traction. Everyone I call gives me different advice. Looking at Goodyear ComforTred Touring
Michelin Harmony
Pretti P4 -4 Season

Do you live in an area where you need winter tires? No all-season tire will get “great” traction on snow.

Longer treadlife (80k mile) usually means a trade-off in worse traction and ride quality.

Goodyear, Michelin, and Pirelli are all good tires. Generally, you get what you pay for.

To get an idea of snow traction, look at Consumer Reports, Nov 10 issue and go from there.

As others have said, your choice will be a trade off. You may gain life, but you may loose traction. If there was just one tyre that would do it all well, then it would be easy, but it is not.

In addition to what you find here, I suggest you check out TireRack [tirerack.com] They have a lot of good solid information.

I don’t know were you are or how bad the winters may be there so I will not try to suggest any specific tyres. I will suggest that if you will be driving on snow or ice, then you should consider for WINTER tyres (not snow) for the winter, and regular tyres for the rest of the year.

4 season tyres are not the best choice for any weather conditions. They are a compromise.

Do tell us where you life and fill us in on any local weather conditions we might not be aware of. Then we may be able to provide better advice.

bigajadog:

What you’re asking simply doesn’t exist. Tires, like everything else in life, is about compromise.

Where do you live where you want good snow traction? I live in upstate NY (you know, that Austria-sized portion northwest of NYC) where the lake effect snowstorms can get quite bad, and the regular snowstorms are quite bad as well. For this, I outfit all of my vehicles with an extra set of rims mounted up with nice knobby studable snow tires… my 4x4 truck getting studs on its set because the ride quality is already crap so the road noise of studs is indiscernable.

I can tell you with great confidence that my old front-wheel drive 95 Toyota Corolla with its four snow shoes outfitted could barrel past any CR-V wearing some stupid “all weather” hoops on a snow-covered road. My rear-wheel drive Mercedes is also quite good at zooming about in the fury of old man winter, you just have to be a bit more mindful of the throttle when the rear breaks loose.

Now, that being said… snow tires suck at water evacuation. All those big chunky blocks of rubber don’t do much for allowing water to escape from the pressure brought on by the weight and speed of your vehicle.

If you really do live in a snowy area, get some dedicated snows, and a cheap set of steel rims to put them on to reduce seasonal swap cost.

As for an “80K” tire… yeah, that thing might last all the way to 2/32" tread by rolling for 80K in a lab, but such a claim is absolute crap.

You have a car that is worth approximately what? 8-10K? Was closer to 20K when it was new? Why on God’s green earth would you want $600 of rubber carrying that vehicle around for what is essentially 1/3 of the vehicle’s life in sun, rain, sleet, and snow? Are you that much of a tightwad?

I have Comfort-Treds on my Odyssey. They’re smooth and quiet, I like them. But you’d probably get better snow traction from the Goodyear Triple-Treds.

The reviews at Tire Rack’s web site are a good source of information.

Great traction usually means softer rubber. Long tread life means harder rubber. It’ll be hard to find both.