Sponsored by The Tire Rack

[Nifty]

Back in September when I took delivery of my 135 a huge concern of mine was its capability in winter since it was RWD. All of my previous cars had been front wheel drive with stock A/S tires and I seemed to make it through each winter fairly unscathed. But with RWD I was wondering if I would be able to get through winter without inccident. Hopefully someone can get some use from my experiences.

One of the first things I did was put some Conti DWS tires on the car. The tread life, good dry/wet performance and supposed ability to handle snow pushed me to pick up a set (225/40R-18 Front and 255/35R-18 Rear).

Well, over the holidays I got the chance to see how they would handle themselves. The first day I took them out there was about 3 inches on the ground that had been compacted to the point of being ice-like (On the roads up to my place anyway). The first thing I thought when I got onto that surface was "oh crap perhaps this wasn't the best idea", the stability control lights were flashing all the time and the rear end was pretty unstable. Nonetheless I got to where I needed to go without incident.

The more I drove the car though the more I started to like the tires and the DSC system. With so much torque I really had to baby the throttle even with TC (which works pretty well) in order to get going with out a ton of wheel spin. While the rear end might get a little out of line off a start, the stability systems do a pretty good job of keeping it in check. Once the car got going, I didn't feel unsafe at all.

A couple days after the first experience, I awoke to 6-10 inches of fresh snow. In my driveway It was deep enough to where the front lip was pretty much in the snow, but I had to get to my parents house across town for some festivities. I got out of the driveway no problem and headed across town without anything more than some slow starts. My parents house is at the top of a fairly long incline, and the car (while slowy) didn't have much of a problem getting up through the deep unplowed snow.


My Frist RWD experience with Conti DWS tires left me with the following thoughts:
- The Conti DWS tires have met my expections of being a decent snow performer and I should have no problem running them year round.
- The DSC system is really quite good at keeping the car in check, learn how to take advantage of it. I turned off stability all controls on a straight snowy road and lets just say the diference it makes is amazing