Goodyear releasing a 195 50 R19 tire sometime soon

Which is pretty funny because I'm pretty sure Goodyear makes some/all of the Dunlop tires for North America. (Dunlop isn't its own company, it's a licensing name used by a joint venture of Sumitomo and Goodyear.)

edit: The Enasave is made in Japan by Sumitomo.

 

Correct, my Dunlop Enasave tires were made in Japan by Sumitomo.

Now, that is a sleek-looking aero wheel cover, too.

 

I'm glad you like yours. The ones that came on my Corolla were noticeably more efficient than Michelin Defenders, but the Enasave wet and snowy weather handling was horrific. They were put back on the car for trade in to the dealer with about 30,000 miles. They were due for replacement.

If I understand North Dakota weather correctly, it's colder than the great lakes, but the snow may not be as deep.

In your environment, does it matter whether you have the best winter tire, or just a decent one? I've not run into snow that stopped me in the Prius, but we're also not working with a lot of ground clearance. In snow much deeper than six inches the bottom of the car gets to be a problem.

 

Snow in LA? I’ll take my chances.

 

Pretty much. It's also why I'd rather run a great all-weather if I have the chance. We get a little bit of everything up here, but our roads often stay completely clear for weeks at a time between snows, even if the temps are very cold. In fact, it's often too cold to snow beyond light flurries(the air simply can't hold enough moisture for significant snowfall). We'll normally get 1-2 major snowfalls of 12" or more, 3-5 snowfalls of 6"-10", 1-2 ice storms, and a bunch of light/med snows of 0.5"-4".

The Mich X-Ice Snow or Nokian Hakk 9/R5 are perfect for up here if you must have a winter tire. Some farmers run Blizzaks if they have to drive on unmaintained or minimally maintained roads. I've got a friend that ran Hakk 10s because his work commute went right underneath the exhaust of a cooling tower and the road stayed super icy throughout the winter. I used to run Nokian all-weather WRG3 and WRG4 on my gen3, and it was fine up to and a little beyond 6". I even used them when I was living in Eugene, OR and they got hit with their worst storm in history; 14+" of super heavy, wet snow. I was able to drive around the city fairly easily while everyone else was stuck at home(did some damage to my underpanels in the process).

I honestly don't see much advantage to running Blizzaks on a Prius, but I'm not going to fault anyone who does. It's just that Blizzaks do their best in heavy snow, but the lack of serious ground clearance on the Prius means you can't really drive in the conditions that the Blizzaks are best at. If I was driving a pickup with a foot of clearance in an area where 12" or more of snow was common, I'd probably buy Blizzaks in a heartbeat.

In then end, it's all about matching up the right tire for the individual's typical conditions. (Though I doubt any of the tires listed in my previous post would be less than an 8/10 in their worst individual category. Among the top tires, you're really just splitting hairs.)


And saying all that, our daily highs this week have been right around 90F/32C. It's a f-ed up world we're living in.

 

67 versus 72 is roughly a 7% disparity, which is the same as our gen 3. Goes without saying in which direction.

Our west coast winters are relatively mild, and getting milder methinks. We do get the occasional dump of snow, then back to rain. Michelin X-Ice/Snow is what I’ve used, and I like them: they roll like well-mannered all-seasons, on our usually bare roads.

Don’t fall into the trap of conflating speedometer with odometer. The speedometer only, is designed to read high, it’s mandated, in a (mostly vain) hope of slowing drivers down a bit. But the odometer should be pretty accurate. When it isn’t there’s been court cases.

 

Started a fire here for the second morning in a row.

I figure I can put down some ashes if the driveway gets icy (memo to me: remember to run a magnet through it, just in case).

 

Curious, how accurate is your speedometer with I assume your stock wheels/tires?
(Checking with GPS).

I've read that Euro cars are typically 3 or so mph high, because of regulations. My MINI is, and previous VW's as well.