Perhaps you have a single vehicle on which you depend to get you to every destination, through all seasons, in all conditions.  Or perhaps you have the luxury of maintaining a stable of vehicles, each with a specific purpose or style.  In either case, your choice in tire is going to make the biggest difference in how the vehicle performs under any given condition.  If it’s a single, multi-purpose vehicle then maintaining an inventory of different types of tires allows you to tailor the vehicle’s performance and style at your discretion more so than any other change you could make.  If its a dedicated sports car, for example, running the right tire for the intended use will maximize your fun behind the wheel.

Let’s face it:  the only physical connection between your car and the road is the tire.  Since the road conditions change through the seasons and over various terrains, shouldn’t you adapt your tires as well?  Too commonly, drivers slap on a set of all-season tires in hopes that it’ll do in all conditions.  But an enthusiast knows that an all-season tire is nothing more than a compromise. No all-season tire delivers the same performance in the dry as a dedicated summer tire, nor the level of traction & confidence of a winter tire in the cold, wet and snow, nor the durability or traction of a dedicated off-road tire out on the trail.

There are two reasons for this: tire compound and tread design.

Tire Compound

The tire compound or material is made up of the rubber and polymers used to construct the outer layer of the tire, where the “rubber meets the road.” This compound sits atop a “skeleton” of metal bands to give the tire its shape and offer some puncture resistance.  Different compositions and blends of this compound exist to perform in different environments.

Winter tires have compounds that remain pliable and grippy in extreme cold, but this comes at the expense of warm weather longevity, where the compound becomes mushy, as if driving on tires made exclusively of gummy bears. In these conditions, winter tires deteriorate very quickly, which is why these tires do not last long if driven year-round.

Summer tires on the other hand have compounds that hold up very well at high temperatures, like you’ll see even on cooler days but if driven under load and stress (such as on a track or through a canyon). This type of compound keeps the tire from disintegrating in these conditions, but freezes easily and becomes hard and unresponsive, as if your tires have turned to stone when the flakes fly.

Off-road tires have compounds that are less prone to puncture or tearing than street tires, and some incorporate additional metal belting or Kevlar in the sidewalls.  They also balance this durability with the ability to remain flexible enough for use when aired down, which is useful to give the tire a wider footprint when running in sand, for example, or for contouring the tire’s contact patch to rock faces when climbing boulders.

All-season tires use a compound that retains some pliability in the cold, and which doesn’t turn to mush in the heat, but doesn’t offer the extent of performance of any type of dedicated tire.

Tread Design

Have you ever looked at the tread design of a true racing car, like that of an open-wheel racer from Formula 1? I mean, really looked. If so, you’ll notice that it actually lacks any of the grooves and designs that we typically associate with “tire tread.”

This is because for maximum performance on a dry, smooth surface, you want 100% of the tire gripping as much surface as possible. Anywhere in a tire there are grooves or channels, the tire is not gripping the surface.

Next question: have you ever driven on a public road? I presume you wouldn’t be reading this if you hadn’t. So you may have noticed that they are not always (or ever) in pristine condition, and you certainly can’t be sure they will be dry at all times.

Consumer-grade tires have tread designs to deal with these conditions, as well as to handle other considerations like road noise (“tire hum”), government road-safety regulations, and marketability (cosmetics), as well as to address their intended application, of course.

A dedicated summer tire is set up to deal with wet conditions as the most extreme condition, so the channels are designed to evacuate any water on the road that a tire encounters away from the contact patch. When water is not evacuated from beneath the tire, this results in hydroplaning, or floating over the water without vehicle control. But water is the most these tires can take on, and even race car tires will sometimes have such channeling for racing in the rain.

A dedicated winter tire takes this further, with thousands of additional super-tiny, squiggly channels, called “sipes”. This siping is actually meant to pick up and retain snow within the surface of the tire, and looks like this:

Why? Because snow-on-snow creates more friction – and therefore traction – than rubber on snow. Think of the last time you made a snowman. You could create a good, nice sized ball by rolling snow onto itself to achieve the proverbial “snowball effect.” But if you had tried to pack snow onto, say, a rubber bouncing ball to start with, it wouldn’t likely work out well. Snow tires utilize the same theory, so in essence the traction you enjoy with snow tires is courtesy of contact with other snow, not as much from contact by the tire itself and the snow. Snow tires also have the same watter-evacuating channels as all road-legal tires.  Keep in mind that the United States is the only country to receive a significant snowfall that does not legally mandate snow tires to be used during snowy seasons.

All-season tires have some of this, too, but not near the quantity of a dedicated snow tire. A dedicated summer-tire will have no siping at all, and is therefore exceptionally dangerous to take into wintry conditions.  To drive the point home, take a look at the video below comparing the winter traction of a rear-wheel-drive sports car with winter tires to an all-wheel-drive wagon with performance tires:

If you have more time, this video from Everyday Driver does an awesome job busting the myths that you must have four- or all-wheel-drive in the snow, and proves that the right tire is really the most important vehicle component for winter driving:

Off-road tires feature tread designs aimed specifically for their intended purpose, too, and even have their own sub-classifications within the all-terrain family.  Mud Terrain tires feature large “lugs” or blocks of tread with the greatest open space between lugs (“voids”) to help the tire clean itself by preventing mud and debris from sticking to the tire.  However, because this means that snow doesn’t pack in between these larger voids, they make awful winter tires – almost as dangerous as Summer tires (at least mud-terrains are semi-useful in deep snow).  All-terrain tires feature some of this mud-friendly design, but the voids are generally smaller and/or only present on part of the tire.  All-terrain tires will also feature interlocking lugs that are smaller but arranged at a wide variety of angles to help “bite” onto surfaces that come in all shapes and textures, and usually feature some siping for snow.  High-speed racing or “baja” tires are similar to Summer performance tires for cars in that they feature sections of large, smoother blocks for a greater degree of contact with the “road”, but maintain larger voids and offer greater durability.

If you drive something like a CUV, SUV, or Truck you can even rotate between all three types of tire (summer, winter, off-road) to showoff different styles year-round and to keep your vehicle’s driving dynamics properly matched to the trek.  For any car, rotating between summer and winter tires between seasons is a no-brainer to ensure you get the most performance & safety from your ride.  Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t cost much more in the long run since you aren’t wearing down a tire while its out of the rotation.  You can even buy super cheap sets of “steelies” or used wheels to mount them on ensuring they are always aired up & ready to go, which means you’re then only a jack, stand and some wrenching away from changing out the set any time the mood strikes.

At the end of the day, an all-season tire tries to be the jack of all trades, and of course ends up as the master of none. Therefore, it is well suited to applications, drivers, and vehicles who have similar middle-of-the-spectrum expectations.  But as enthusiasts, we demand the best!