Hey all. Looks like soon will finally/hopefully be a time of me getting much work done on the bird! And one of the things it's gonna need (among many) is a set of new tires. I snagged up a set of Formula 16x8's, so I'll be upgrading to slightly bigger/wider tires too!

And I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death plenty of times here, but I'm in the infamous summer vs all season tires dilemma. And who better to ask than fellow third gen owners?

I was initially considering all seasons, but am wondering if summers are the way to go? This car is not a daily driver, and will not be driven in any type of winter conditions, so I'm interested in the improved dry road grip I'm told summer tires have. However, I also live in the Pacific Northwest, so I need a tire that will still handle well in the rain too. If summers will work for me, it opens up alot of other options. Not too many all seasons available in 245/50/16, it seems!

I guess my main question here - Do summer tires necessarily have worse wet-road grip than A/S's in mild and warmer temps?

 

It all depends on the brand of "Z" rated tires. Some suck in the wet and others do quite well. Check out Tirerack.com for the coments on 245/50/16 tires.

 

Im guessing the tire dealer will know also.

 

I'm not at all a fan of all season tires. They do nothing well. Ok, they can be better for fuel economy but that's it. You can find summer tires that have been designed to work well in wet. Like DJP87Z28 said, tire rack is great for rating tire performance and for costomer comments. Just a little FYI. Wider tires are naturally worse in the rain because they don't displace water as well as a thiner tire.

 

The bald Nittos I had handle better than the all season sumitomos I have on it now....The Nittos were either ultra performance summer or super, I don't remember. The only advantage I've noticed that the sumitomos have over the Nittos is that the sumitomos handle wet cornering MUCH better.

 

It depends on the tire. There are performance tire on the market that work better in the wet than all seasons. You have to understand that an all season tire is a compromise in design. They do everything good enough. But performance tires are designed to do more specific things. If you had either of these tires http://www.nittotire.com/TireSelector/Size they were obviously meant for dry pavment. But these were meant for wet as well. http://www.firestonetire.com/Quick_T...h/Find_by_Size
Note the fact that the performance tires are rated better in the wet than the all season.

 

Im running summer "ultra high performance" tires from BFgoodrich (the pro comp sport 2s). They are awesome in the short time they have been on the car. My dry weather grip went up big time from the crappy all seasons that were on the car before and my wet grip went up a good amount too. All in all a great tire for the money.

Basically if your car is not going to see the winter anyways you might as well get a good performance tire.