went outside today, car buried in snow from the street cleaner trucks.
brushed off the windows and roof ... got in and drove off after rocking my way out in about 2 minutes.
15"/175 A/S tires ... best for cutting through snow.

 

I'd like to know how it went for you as i think I will just go with the all season tires this first winter. I mostly only drive on weekends and put about 5-8k a year on my car. Usually, if it's bad out, we just stay at home no matter what we are driving. NYC cleans up snow pretty quickly and we really only get hit a few times a year. There's always the subway!

 

My wife didn't let me take my car today. I ended up using her car today for the errands I did. I did pull out my car from the driveway to clear out the sides of the driveway and go for a quick ride, as I suspected I was plowing the snow a bit, but I did not get stuck at all. There were a few times I stopped in about 6-8" of mixed snow and I started moving with little difficulty. I'm taking my car in to service tomorrow, so I will be driving it, in the morning, but by tomorrow most of the roads are completely cleared.

 

Thanks shoof and good luck tomorrow. Shouldn't have any problems with the plowed roads. I see your in LI! You guys got hit much worse than we did in the city!!! We had about 10 inches.

My MINI arrives at the VDC Monday morning (today since it is past midnight). I wonder how long it will take it to get to MINI of Manhattan...I am hoping to get it BEFORE 2010 to get the tax break.

 

I live in Brooklyn and work on LI...I think we got a little over 13" of white stuff at home, and my secretary says they got 18" by my office (she lives around the corner from my office). I'm going in now to see what the situation is. I'll probably spend a good part of the day shoveling...

Pics of my car that I took on Sunday morning:

 

Woodside, Queens here! How did it go today with those all seasons?

 

Funny you mention that...I took my car in to service today for the chain tensioner issue...they gave me a 6sp Clubman base car with just hot seats and a roof. Wow what a difference the 15" wheels are compared to my car with 17" runflats and springs...It's like driving a Cadillac compared to my car..

And so far, no, I didn't get stuck in it either. I'm buried in a spot now too..Need to pull it out to go home, so let's see how I do!

Pic is a little dark, it's night out

 

hey Woodside
went fantastic ... I always had A/S tires on my MINI's and they are great on ice and snow ... the car is super tossable on 15" wheels and you can correct it easy when you hit a problem.
DSC "OFF" as well on icy roads ... never really liked its unpredictability.

I come from rear wheel cars that were pigs in snow ... so driving the MINI in it is super easy.

 

I have a MCCS with the OEM All Season runflats AND I also have the LSD. So far I haven't had any trouble on snow packed roads.

.

 

We did not get to much snow this week around Chicago, only ice and rain. My clubman was amazing driving on ice, you just have to remember is winter and drive accordingly! And of course, get a good set of winter tires.

Cannot wait for the snow to try it.

 

Get yourself a set of Continental Contact Xtreme DWS tires. They're not available at in 205 but 215 isn't a problem, actually looks better on the car. These are all season high performance tires, the grip is pretty damn good in the snow.

 

I had them on my GTI, they came with the sportcontacts (summers) and I changed them to the extremecontacts when I got the car. Great tire! Nothing beats a winter tire though..

 

Question , I have ordered Blizzak tires for my JCW Clubman , they won't be here for a few days and its snowing today ( allot ) . How safe is it to drive on my Continental Conti Sport Contact tires , I believe they are 3 season not even 4 season . Yes I am new to "tire " world . PS I'm new to the area and have not had to really drive in "snow" since I purchased my mini .

 

Let's just say that it would make it for a very exciting driving experience. I think it might be a little too exciting for me to want to attempt. You will be able to drive it and move around a bit, but it will be very slippery. The two times I drove a car with summer tires on snow was one, trying to pull my S2000 (2 winters ago) out of the driveway to clean up the snow around it, that attempt took me about 45 minutes to pull it out, which was all of about 20 feet on an incline, and surrounded by 2 walls (scroll up to see the pic of my Clubman buried in the snow to see what my driveway looks like). The other time was driving my GS300 (like 7 years ago) to work, the car was sliding all over the place. I didn't realize that it was a summer tire on the car, because it wasnt anything special, it was a touring tire that the car happened to come with, and I didn't even think of anything when getting the car that it would have summer tires on it. I promptly changed them to an Ultra High Performance A/S Tire (Michelin Pilot Sport A/S at the time) and they were the world of a difference better than the other tires in all seasons. Mind you both cars were RWD, so that made it even more challenging.

 

Denise,
I replaced my conti's for blizzak's two weeks ago because of the lack of traction, and that was just trying to get it out of the garage with freezing temperatures and no snow/ice outside yet. I did not drive my car for 3 days waiting for the tires (I did not wanted to take any chances!).

I had the chance try the blizzak's this past couple of days and the traction is fantastic! so if you can wait for a couple of days as I did, you will be rewarded bigtime

I think "Shoof" is right saying that it would be an "exiciting driving experience"

 

We have been driving our 2009 clubman for a couple months with Blizzak's and have been pleased. Does much better in the snow and ice than we expected for a two wheel drive vehicle.

 

Just got back from Pittsburgh and the ice up there was a real drag, especially on this one very vertical driveway. I almost did not make it to the top. I have the tires that came with the ClubmanS, not winter tires, and I also made the mistake of keeping the sport button on. Bad choice. Once I turned it off traction control quit blinking and I got over the hill. No car really does well in black ice anyway, regardless of the choice of tire. All in all she did pretty good in the snow though, especially once I figured out how to drive it in that slop. I don't get much snow where I live so it was a learning experience.

 

We ordered a set of 4 new Michelin X-Ice X12, 196/55R16 XL 91T back in September. They are a new tire from Michelin with stronger sidewalls (XL),and they are not run-flats. What a smooth and quiet ride compared to the Contis. They finally arrived in October, the day before our first major snow storm. After three months, I have no complaints about the tires. They go through anything and everything. Feels like driving my previous car: Volvo XC70. We own two Clubmans, but only one has snow tires. Needless to say, the one without snows stays home on bad days.

 

thank you lots to think about ,

 

Just bought used 16" winters (Dunlop Sport Sp) off of somebody else's cooper s for my 08 clubman S. Rather than paying big bucks for winter's, I dropped a couple hundred and put these tires on the original rims. I plan to by replacement rims/tires for the summer. With good winter tires the Clubman gets around very well. Leave the stability/traction control on, and you'll have a hard time getting stuck.

 

My experience with snow tires has been a decrease in stability, or more to the point the car gets a bit squirmy. I really like feel of the Goodyear Excellence tires that came with the car, so in order to preserve that, I decided to cut additional grooves in one pair of tires to give the tire a bit more bite. I was going to buy one of those hot iron tire groovers but decided I didn't want to deal with the stink. I used a straight bladed mat board cutter (which controlled the depth of the cut) and then an 'L' shaped exacto knife to remove the remaining rubber. It took a bit over an hour to do each tire. During the summer months they stay in the rear, and then I rotate them to the front just before the first snow. So last week we had the big snow storm here on Long Island and I got to try out my experiment. Are they as good as snow tires, heck no, but they took me through some pretty deep stuff without much problem. The biggest problem with the Mini is the that low spoiler on the front. Driving on a back road through about 8 inches on SUV trampled snow was not easy, but I doubt if snow tires would have helped all that much under those conditions. Anyway, being out of work caused me to come up with this money saving solution, and so far it seems to be working just fine. The other problem I noticed with the Mini is the braking is really touchy in the snow with the front tires locking way before the back. I wish the car had a brake bias proportioning valve like my old '82 Jetta. I do keep a set of cable chains in the trunk as a backup for the really deep stuff.

 

^

I can't see how that could make as big a difference as you suggest, but if you say so!

 

His tire job should give it more edges to bite into the snow with and the larger spaces will let it fling out more snow instead of letting it pack on smooth rubber. Granted I don't know how well it would really help though.

 

So basically you are siping the tire...these BTW are Grand TouringSummer Tires, don't know why you'd be cutting those up??!!

 

OUch!!! Taking an X=Acto to your tires is pretty bold. At the price of them, I would never do that! It's bad enough I only get 20K out of the run flats as they are.