Opinion: Why the UK shouldn't overlook winter tyres

With a set of winter rubber on tiny steelies, nothing is stopping our man during this cold snap

Winter 2018-19 brought me two new experiences: fatherhood and the sharing of voting rights on a car purchase. My other half’s red lines for the family hack prescribed something high-riding with a respectable image. I wanted petrol smoothness, passable performance and a durable cabin. A 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan Sport 2.0 TSI with a manual gearbox and 197bhp ticked the boxes.

Heated hide and door mirrors complemented the Haldex-based four-wheel drive system to make the cold months that linger long in Edinburgh more bearable. But for full rink-ready efficacy, I needed winter rubber.

The Tiguan’s 18in alloys came wrapped in 235/50 R18 summer tyres from Goodyear, but rather than swapping them for cold-weather equivalents, I went for a separate set of plumper, narrower tyres on smaller steel wheels for winter use only. Whichever set was spare could fortunately be stored in our garage.

This was for two main reasons. Smaller tyres are cheaper, as are the small steel wheels you can fit them to. But more important, narrower tyres generally fare better on packed snow and standing water because they focus the vehicle’s weight onto smaller contact patches.

Cherries on top were that my alloys would avoid the worst of the weather, the Tiguan Sport’s unnecessarily firm ride would soften, lower rolling resistance would save a little fuel and I could change the wheels over myself should the notion grip me come the equinox.

I chose Falken Eurowinter HS01s for their combination of mid-range price and high wet-grip rating, which was important because the tyres would be parting cold water more often than crunching over snow. The smallest wheels approved for our car by the TUV – arbiter of such things on the Continent – were 16in in diameter and 6.5in wide, with the appropriate tyres being 215/65 R16s.

At £130 for each corner (£90 per tyre plus £40 per Alcar steel wheel), this was still a cheaper solution than the £140 it would cost to fit the same rubber to the Tiguan’s 18in alloys.

Ordered and fitted, I was happy with the dynamics, but less so the aesthetics. As a steel wheel fetishist, I could brush off assumptions that my alloys had been half-inched, but the silver paint on the rims exaggerated just how small they really were. They looked, well, silly.

This vanity blew my balance sheet away with a gloss black respray from Pentland Powder Coating at £48 per wheel. The Tiguan looking slightly more a Serious Utility Vehicle, we spent two winters enjoying unflinchingly secure wet-weather handling, but little snow.

Until today, when Auld Reekie awoke beneath a generous duvet of Aspen-grade powder, bringing the chance to test ‘Steely Van’ on the white stuff at last. An eight-mile loop for an urban errand sees us pass cars with either or even both their driven axles slithering and sliding through slush, or floundering to a standstill against the shallowest of snowy inclines.

But we tackle the slush at a canter. For the most part, it feels no different from driving a wet road. Confident progress comes without breaking traction under throttle, steering or braking. The greater limiting factor is, in fact, the need to accommodate the creeping, unsteady progress of others.

Packed snow calls for more restraint. The ABS chimes in more readily (although the steering remains true as the electronics do their work) and an overly bold flex of ankle or wrist wakes the traction control or reveals understeer. But having sought out and found these limits, it’s easy to manage them and we make safe and steady progress. This seems to strike some as black magic: another driver waves their hands and mouths “No!” as we happily point ourselves down a snowbound hill.

It isn’t magic, of course – just the chemistry of a silica-rich compound and good tread design – and you can’t charge about like it’s a dry road in the height of summer. But did we come close to getting stuck at any point? No. And did we complete our journey safely? Absolutely. These may well be the reasons a neighbour’s identical Tiguan on summer tyres hasn’t turned a wheel this week.

Yes, there is an outlay to winter tyres, but for me, it’s easily weighed against the price of immobility, the stress of driving on inappropriate tyres or the manifold costs of an accident. And when you’re using winter tyres, you’re not wearing out the summer set, which therefore last longer.

While it seems highly unlikely that winter rubber will become mandatory in the UK as it is in several continental states, like some other measures currently in force, there would certainly be a greater good if it were.

*READ MORE*

*Winter tyres: should I buy them? *

*Under the skin: Why seasonal tyres will help you get a grip *

*Car tyres: everything you need to know*