"Spats are fitted at the front of each wheel arch to further suppress
   airflow changes around the tires, which themselves feature a low
   rolling resistance compound."

   This winter I received an practical lesson on the total uselessness of
   the low rolling resistance tires.  My wife traded her old Subaru for a
   2014 model, advertised as now being capable of achieving 30+ mpg.
   The first thing that tweaked my curiosity about the new Subaru was the
   fact that before we drove off in our new car, the salesman walked out
   and started letting air out of the tires.  He said "Keep tire pressure
   at 29 psi" (?????).

   The good news was that the car did indeed make 30+ mpg.  The bad new was
   that the car interacted with the highway pavement joints like a farm
   hay-wagon crossing railroad-tracks..  and things got worse.... We could
   barely get out of our N Wisconsin snow-covered driveway.  The LCD
   display on the dash would continually display orange wavy tire tracks as
   we tried to climb the long hill leaving our yard.  A couple of times we
   slid right off the road into the snowbanks along the side.  It was
   almost as if the tires didn't know which way forward was.

   After a couple of days of total frustration I called the Subaru dealer,
   who graciously offered to replace the Yokohama plastic tires with
   genuine Firestone winter tires.  The Subaru is now nearly unstoppable,
   goes like a tank through most anything.  I have not seen the gas-mileage
   display hit 30 mpg since the tire swap, but I could not care less.
   It is now April 14th, we still have 2' of snow in our yard, and a few
   more inches are predicted for tomorrow night. :(

   RBerglund

   The prius rides the same way. You feel every pebble in the road.


   Paul Lamar

Even the ¨all season¨ tires fitted by the factory do not work in REAL winter conditions. When you get a dump of snow, especially the wet stuff, you may as well be on drag slicks.
Once the temp drops to about 5 degrees C switch to winter tires. Steel wheels with the winter tires is a good plan as the steel wheels are more durable and cheaper to replace if you slide into a curb. Then once it is warm again just bolt the original tires back on. Fuel economy is not going to break records when the front tires are pushing through 2-3¨ of snow. This from Alberta, Canada. Early last winter, every time it snowed was 20cm or 8¨.

Dale Davies


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