I mentioned this before, but now that my car is actually here I'm going to ask again. It came with the Hankook Ventus Prime 3 summer tires.
While my car was being built, I bought a set of takeoff wheels and tires from a non-SE Mini. The wheels are Revolites and the tires are Hankook Optimo H426B A/S run flats. These are a high performance A/S Grand Touring tire. My research shows that they are NOT a good wet traction tire...terrible reviews and tests in the wet. Not a good thing for my WINTER tire set. Does anyone here have experience with these tires?
As I live in the Pacific Northwest, we have pretty wet winters, but not a lot of snow. Usually we get a couple of episodes of light snow that hangs around for a couple of days, but we have an AWD RAV4 Hybrid to handle that. So snow is not a top priority for me. Temps from late fall through winter are generally in the 40s with quite a bit of the 30s and occasional dips into the 20s.
So option 1 is to give the Optimo a try, but I'm not a fan of sending my wife off to work with tires that are probably poor in our wet weather.
Option 2 is to get new tires put on these rims before I get them put onto the car. I am considering a set of Blizzak WS90s as they are great winter tires for snow (not really needed for me) but also well rated for wet (braking, traction and cornering). And they run about $130 for my size (195/55R16).
Can anyone else suggest a good low temp A/S or Winter tire with great wet traction in the coldish temps? Thanks.
Rob