Misadventures with shitty OEM tires

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 11/21/2016 at 11:59 • Filed to: None

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My wife’s 2016 Subaru Impreza came factory equipped with one of the terrible-er examples of OE tires: the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . We picked the Impreza because we were looking for a car that would be good here in Wisconsin winter. But with these tires, well, let’s just say I’m crossing my fingers.

You may have noticed from the image at the top of this post that these Yokohama Avid S34D tires only have 2.5 of the available 5 stars on Tire Rack. These are the Tire Rack detailed owner survey results:

Yeesh.

These are a regular, not high-performance, all-season tire with a treadwear rating of only 320 and apparently dogshit winter traction capability, that are original equipment on a car like the Subaru Impreza, one of the main selling points of which is that it’s supposed to be good in winter .

Neither of us really wanted to go with the Crosstrek with its tacked-on body cladding and extra ride height. But one benefit is that it comes with vaguely trucky !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! tires. Here’s their survey results:

What the hell, Subaru? The Crosstrek gets perfectly decent, if not exceptional tires while the Impreza gets straight up bullshit tires?

Now, I knew these supposedly-awful tires were the OE tire before we leased her car, and I figured we’d wait and see. On our mediocre-to-bad Wisconsin roads, her car is for the most part nice and smooth and comfy and reasonably quiet. Maybe that’s because it’s just a comfy car and the tires are doing it no favors. My calibration for these things is thrown all out of whack by driving a lowered BMW with summer tires on it.

Snow season is fast approaching, and now we have to see how the car performs. Worst case scenario if these tires are as garbage as rated, we’ll buy some proper tires for it (either !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) and sell the shit Avid S34Ds to some unsuspecting person on Craigslist who doesn’t know any better and be out a couple hundred bucks total. This wouldn’t be the first time !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Even though the car is a lease my wife really likes it and we could very well end up buying it at the end of the lease.

But still, it’s pretty dumb that I even have to think about doing this. It’d be one thing if it was for some regular beige car but on a damn “this car is good in winter” Subaru, it makes me feel like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

CB > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 12:13

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... they’re all-season tires on an economy car? I wouldn’t have expected them to be good in the winter anyway. I don’t really see how this is their fault. Advertising it’s a car that’s good for winter is mainly due to the AWD, I assume, not the tires.

jimz > CB 11/21/2016 at 12:23

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besides, AWD doesn’t necessarily make a vehicle “good for winter.” FWD with winter tires will almost always beat AWD with all-seasons. Plus winter tires do two things in snow that AWD doesn’t; help you steer and help you stop.

Textured Soy Protein > CB 11/21/2016 at 12:24

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I generally don’t expect to have great tires as standard, but I would hope to have at least vaguely competent tires that suit the capabilities of the car. The Crosstrek isn’t any more expensive and its tires have perfectly decent ratings. For cars with no crossover pretensions, I checked the Civic and Corolla and their OE tires are at least acceptable to above-average. Even putting aside the snow capability or the lack thereof, the S34Ds on the Impreza have a 320 treadwear rating compared to 500 to 620 on the Civic and Corolla.

BKosher84 > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 12:40

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In b4:

“HERP DERP YOU NEED TO GET DETICATED SNO TEEERRREEESSS BECAUSE SNOW IS THE DEVIL”

Textured Soy Protein > BKosher84 11/21/2016 at 12:46

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Here, I can head that off before it happens:

For my 335xi I have snow tires on the stock wheels and spiffy 19" wheels with summer tires the rest of the year.

On my wife’s car she doesn’t want to bother with swapping wheels, her commutes are short, and there are all-season tires out there that have decent enough snow capability. Just not the ones that came on it, unfortunately.

Textured Soy Protein > jimz 11/21/2016 at 13:04

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That’s why Subaru’s tire choice irritates me. A large part of their marketing is about their cars being good in the winter, but awd in itself doesn’t make a car good in the winter. It needs decent tires. These Yoko S34Ds don’t even have siping on their tread blocks. It’s pretty obvious why they don’t do well in winter. Look at their tread compared to the couple tires I’m considering replacing them with, both of which have good winter ratings both from Tire Rack tests and customer surveys.

The OE tires might as well be summer tires looking at the difference in tread.

nerd_racing > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 13:12

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My Mazda 2 came with similar tires. They were awful in the winter. But since I bought it new I decided to spend a little extra and get a set of rims and studded snows for the car for winters (Buffalo NY area). I never got the thing stuck or slid around with it at all. Sure it cost me a little in the long run, but I drove through EVERYTHING, including the 2014 Snovember storm when we got 48 hours of lake effect and shut down half the county. It’s all in the tires and ground clearance.

jimz > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 13:19

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let me tell you about my Ranger. it’s a 2011 Sport 4x4. Biggest wheel/tire package offered from the factory on the Ranger.

and the thing (out of the box) is goddamn useless in snow, and not so hot in the wet either. Why? May I present to you the Goodyear Wrangler RT/S:

Absolute pieces of junk. Even though they still have “usable” tread left, when I get the Winterforces put on soon I’m having these things trashed.

Textured Soy Protein > nerd_racing 11/21/2016 at 13:24

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I have two sets of wheels and snow tires for my car but for her we’d rather stick with one set of tires year round.

There are a small number of “all-weather” tires that share many characteristics with winter tires but can be driven year-round. Mostly made by Nokian, the latest version of which is called the Weatherproof, and the last one was called the WRG3.

These are mostly available in Europe and Canada though. Not sure about here in the US.

I suppose I could try to track a set down but otherwise I’d be fine with all-season tires that have been tested as acceptable in winter (if not necessarily extreme conditions).

nerd_racing > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 13:42

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For more moderate climates that can do the trick. For me it just isn’t an option. I drive too much for that and I don’t like limitations. I had a run in with black ice saturday with my blizzaks on the 1 series. I nearly ditched it but I let off and countersteered better than I ever have and managed to save it. Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket...

Spasoje > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 14:08

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Discount Tire is what you’re looking for! They’re the only store in the US that carry Nokians.

I’m actually getting a set of WRG3s mounted at Discount Tire this Friday, replacing a set of WRG2s that I also bought there... Weatherproofs aren’t on sale in the US/Canada yet, but any Discount Tire will sell you WRG3s. They’ll even order them if they don’t have the size, if you can wait about a week. No sweat.

Textured Soy Protein > nerd_racing 11/21/2016 at 14:25

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I’m in Wisconsin where we do get a fair amount of snow but it’s most frequently 6 inches or less and only occasionally do we get a big giant snowfall. My wife’s job is a mile and a half from home, she can make it just fine on good all-seasons and all-weathers would be even better.

Textured Soy Protein > Spasoje 11/21/2016 at 14:27

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Yeah I’m having my Pilot Alpin PA4s put on at Discount Tire soon. They came in over the weekend but their next available appointments aren’t until after I get back from my Thanksgiving travel. I’m trying to decide if I want to go there first thing tomorrow morning and sit and wait for a spot. I’m flying out of town on Wednesday. So yeah I could get the WRG3s if we decide to go that route. I’ve spent way too much money at Discount Tire over the years.

Quadradeuce > jimz 11/21/2016 at 16:09

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Meanwhile, the Goodyear Wrangler AT/S on my truck are out of this world great in the snow in my corner of WI. My first set lasted 85K miles and still had usable tread left (age cause the rubber to get hard, so I replaced them).

jimz > Quadradeuce 11/21/2016 at 16:11

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the AT/S is everything the RT/S is not.

jvirgs drives a Subaru > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 19:38

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My Dart had similar shitty Yokos. Grip was terrible from the day I bought the car and only got worse as the tires wore. Lasted 17k miles before needing to be replaced. Replaced them with a set of Pilot Sport AS3+ from Costco. Lady working the desk said she has a few cars of similar mileage come in to replace similar tires.

NJAnon > Textured Soy Protein 11/21/2016 at 21:26

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You can’t wrap the chains around the tires though? Is that still a thing? (I haven’t been a winter state in a 1,000 years and only remember what happened in Rocky III)

Textured Soy Protein > NJAnon 11/22/2016 at 10:03

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That’s not exactly how it works anymore. Here in Wisconsin you can’t run chains or studded tires unless you’re like a mail truck or something.

Textured Soy Protein > jvirgs drives a Subaru 11/22/2016 at 10:21

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Yeah I saw the A/S3+ in my searching. Those are a bit sportier & pricier than we’d probably go for in this instance. I’m mostly looking at comfort, tread life, and winter grip. The A/S3+ are definitely sportier but they’re not quite a match for what we’d want for my wife’s car.

ateamfan42 > Textured Soy Protein 11/22/2016 at 11:15

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These are a regular, not high-performance, all-season tire with a treadwear rating of only 320 and apparently dogshit winter traction capability....

Now you know why us tire snobs refer to them as “no-seasons”. There is no season in which they are ideal. They are a compromise design at best, and some of the tires out there are pretty badly compromised.

Ever since I first used dedicated winter tires & wheels years ago, I swore I’d never go back to the all-season world.

Textured Soy Protein > ateamfan42 11/22/2016 at 11:55

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I have two sets of wheels with summer and winter tires on my 335xi. Partly because I want summer tires for the rest of the year, and partly because with its lowered suspension I want all the help I can get in winter.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as an all-season tire that works pretty well in winter, if not up to the level of proper winter tires. It’s just these all-season tires are garbage in many ways.

For my wife’s Impreza and her 3 mile round trip commute, I’m totally fine with her rolling on all-seasons that have acceptably high winter test ratings and user reviews.

Honeybunchesofgoats > Textured Soy Protein 02/01/2017 at 10:49

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I have Cinturato P7s on my Jag and I adore them. They’re unsettlingly silent and have great traction and handling. That said, I don’t think treadlife is anything close to the 700 they’re rated for, although they do have a 70,000 manufacturer warranty.

Textured Soy Protein > Honeybunchesofgoats 02/01/2017 at 11:23

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I thought about them but the wet traction test results I saw for them were kinda mediocre.

We ended up going with BFG g-Force Comp-2 A/S which is more performance focused. Tried to get the General RT43 but my local Discount Tire couldn’t get them in time. There was a small increase in ride harshness and noise but still civilized.

My dad recently got a set of P7s for his ‘07 Saab 9-3 Aero convertible though. I had steered him towards the General RT43 but the P7s were more readily available and he didn’t want to go with a UHP tire like I ended up with on our Impreza.

Honeybunchesofgoats > Textured Soy Protein 02/01/2017 at 11:40

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I kind of wonder if the quality hasn’t fallen off. I just read the Tire Rack review from August 2016, and it comes off quite poorly. But when I was shopping for these a few years ago, they had an older review where they come out on top for wet traction, and they say in the new review that they fared much worse in wet conditions than they remembered.

Textured Soy Protein > Honeybunchesofgoats 02/01/2017 at 12:11

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Yeah, this is the test that steered me toward the RT43 over the P7.

Called my local Discount Tire and they were back ordered in the size I needed. I didn’t want to go through the hoops of Tire Rack shipping and install at a random shop that sorta resents you getting the tires from Tire Rack instead of them. I got my summer wheels & tires from Tire Rack because they mounted the tires, shipped them to me, and I popped them on in my garage. But otherwise I’m not the biggest fan of the Tire Rack process.

I’m in WI and my parents are in MD. Most of the chain tire stores out there are terrible. My dad takes his car to a shop run by a high school friend of mine, and he also didn’t want to bother with Tire Rack, so I steered him towards getting tires at my friend’s shop rather than NTB or Mr. Tire or whatever. That shop sells a lot of P7s and getting the RT43s would’ve been tricky.