Mixing Winter Tyres with Michelin Crossclimate+

Hi all, looking for advice on tyre combos for UK winter (plenty of rain, some ice, occasional snow).

Basically I’ve picked up a set of 225/45R17 MSW rims from a friend who’s selling their Golf, which came with ContiWinterContact 850s with loads of tread left - great! Unfortunately it turns out one of them has a terminal cut in the sidewall so I need to replace a pair.

Stock of full winter tyres around here appears to be non-existent, so I’m putting Michelin Crossclimate+ on. These are relatively new all season tyres that are getting rave reviews all over the place for their performance in British winter conditions, but I’m aware that they’ll have quite different driving dynamics from the Contis.

So, the question is - will I be OK with winters on the front and all seasons (not summers) on the back, or should I just replace all 4 with the michelins and throw away some perfectly good winter rubber?

The general consensus is to never mix tires, and if you've got winter tires on the front and all-seasons on the back, you're probably going to leave the roadway tail-first if it suddenly turns icy. I'm not familiar with your local winters, so if that's not an issue, do what you feel. Personally, I'd try to find a pair of winter tires to match the ones you've got, since Michelin themselves don't consider the Crossclimate+ to be a true winter tire, despite their service rating:
http://www.automobilemag.com/news/michelin-crossclimate-new-type-tire/

NEVER mix and match tire types.

Great video to highlight why it is so important:


Save the two extra tires for emergencies. Just don't use them paired with the winters. It isn't worth risking your car and more importantly your life.

Hmm I thought that might be the case.

The thing with our winters and those videos is that we probably end up driving on actual snow one day every 2 years, so the use case isn’t really relevant.

Is it the difference in grip between the 2 compounds that causes the slide or the fact that the all season can’t grip on snow? That is, if you were on a wet road, would the same thing happen?

You are persuading me to put 4 michelins on at this rate.

Why not just replace the one bad winter with a new one?

I've had conti winter contact and they're amazing. The golf TDI I had them on was like being on rails in the snow and ice. With that said one new one > just two of them > a full set of all seasons.

I have a buddy who ran snow tires up front and all seasons in the rear for years and had no complaints, so it's do able, but if you can run full snows do it!

XoneDB4 said:

Hmm I thought that might be the case.

The thing with our winters and those videos is that we probably end up driving on actual snow one day every 2 years, so the use case isn’t really relevant.

Is it the difference in grip between the 2 compounds that causes the slide or the fact that the all season can’t grip on snow? That is, if you were on a wet road, would the same thing happen?

You are persuading me to put 4 michelins on at this rate.

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Fair enough. So let's make this a bit more pertinent to your location in the UK. The thing that you need to know is that the tire compound in winter tires is softer and more pliable when the temperature goes below 45°F (~7°C). This will allow for better traction even if you are not on snow.

Here's another good video that shows how a winter tire does compared to a summer tire (roughly half way through the video they look at how the tires do in that ~7°C range):