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After seeing the pictures and news clips of the winter apocalypse in Buffalo, I figured now was as good a time as any to winterize my Volvo 940's shoes. If you’ve been following FCP Euro’s blog, I previously listed a set of winter tires as the number one addition to your car for the winter season. Being true to my own advice, I picked up a set of state of the art Bridgestone Blizzak WS80 Studless winter tires.

Bridgestone Blizzak WS80

My opinion on tires, be it summer or winter tires, is to not be thrifty. These four patches of rubber are all that keep you and your car on the road. You could have a big brake kit, ABS and traction control, but what use is it if there’s no grip to start with?

These 4 patches of rubber are all that keep you

and your car on the road

From a number of years of winter driving, I can appreciate a good set of winter tires. My Dad’s S80 currently has a set of Bridgestone’s last generation winter tire, the Blizzak WS70. This put me in a unique position to be able to compare last generation winter tire technology to the latest generation tech. The WS70s were great in the snow and icy conditions, but where they weren’t the greatest was on clear, dry road where 90% of the driving is done in the winter. Compared to all-season rubber, they were harsher over bumps compared to the original Michelin tires, allowing the sharp impacts through to the cabin. Oddly, although they felt stiffer over bumps, when turning the wheel the steering lost a bit of its sharpness. Finally, they were noticeably louder than all-season tires with a noise best compared to that of a set of knobbly off-road tires.

Volvo 940 on All Season Tires. Sideways angle may have been intentional.

 Check your load rating

It is important to note the load rating on winter tires. The tires I replaced were 195/60/15 All-Season tires. The load rating on these was fine for my car, and so I figured that it would also be fine for winter tires. However, the problem is that winter tires have a much softer rubber compound than all seasons, and a tire of equivalent size will therefore have a lower load rating. If I had bought the winter tires in the same size, they would not have been appropriate for the weight of my brick. I therefore went one step up to 195/65/15 winter tires. Same width, but slightly taller.

The timing of my tire installation was impeccable. The day after I installed them, winter officially arrived with the first snowfall of the year. While stepping on the brakes above large patches of glare ice, my car confidently slowed down. Now of course, it is not comparable to dry pavement on the brakes, but its much better compared to all-seasons which, on ice, generally don’t give you a feeling that you’re going to make it to a stop. Accelerating away on the slippery stuff in a RWD vehicle is usually a challenge, but the tires gripped and pulled me out with little fuss. I believe this was the tire's millions of microscopic bite particles at work.

Maybe this is mostly marketing jargon,

but I'm a believer

The morning drive was especially bad as the highway had not been cleared. To be perfectly honest, although the traffic was slow, I never had the feeling that I needed more grip. Yes, there were cars spun around and in the ditch, but I was pretty much driving normally while keeping my distance to cars around me. Little did I know, the roads were actually very bad. My dad, who takes a similar commute as mine, was on his ¾-worn WS70s. He emailed me to tell me that his route was treacherous. Bridgestone says these tires have a NanoPro-tech multicell compound which keeps the tires grippy and pliable in the cold while tiny air bubbles in the tread work like a sponge to suck up water from the surface and keep the rubber on the road. Maybe this is mostly marketing jargon, but I'm a believer. Now, I can’t remember exactly what the WS70 tires were like when they were new on icy roads, but I can say that the latest WS80’s will give you the confidence when the road conditions do not.

WS80 on Virgo Wheels

But how do they fare in dry weather highway driving?

In a word: Excellent.

On clear dry roads, they’re quiet, comfortable, and don’t feel at all like you’re running on anything other than all-season tires. It’s that good. The Blizzak WS70 had very obvious downsides, but these WS80s have none of them. Whatever the engineers did in their labs, it worked. The tires did not diminish the steering feel at all, and were noticeably more comfortable compared to my all-season tires which were probably rock hard in the cold. In the wet, I can’t say I’ve tested them to their limits, but I definitely felt like there was more performance underneath the tread if I ever needed it.

The WS80's have none of the downsides but all of the upsides compared to its last generation tech.

Compared to my previous all-season tires and the Blizzak WS70, the Blizzak WS80’s performed beyond anything I was expecting. It’s like the engineers knew exactly what was wrong with their old tire, and created a new one which built on its previous-gen high performance and took away all of the downsides. Even better, these tires were about $100/tire, not a bank-breaking price by any means. If you take care of them, and your alignment isn’t too far off, you can expect these tires to last for about 3-4 years. Take it from me, with the Blizzak WS80 being one of the best performing winter tires available, they’ll be a key part to keeping you safe throughout the Christmas season.

 

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Written by :
Tim Wong

Tim is a Canadian from Windsor, with a knack for taking things apart, and sometimes putting them back together. He is a mechanical engineer by day and backyard mechanic by night. His mantra in life is to never break another bolt.


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