Replacing Tires

Sometime in the near future I have to take my car in and get the tires replaced on it. Without a doubt, the tires on it currently (the ones that came on it when I bought it brand new) are pretty much the worst tires I’ve ever had. The handling in rain is pretty bad, and totally horrible in the snow. In fact, I nearly bought the farm a few times in Vancouver when it snowed. One time I was coming up to my place (which was at the bottom of a slight hill) and couldn’t stop, so I ended up sliding down to the end of the cul-de-sac. Had a car been there, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from smoking it.

Sadly though, I only have around 30,000 kms on my car, so it seems surprising that the treads are nearly bare on all of them. But sure enough, having looked at some of the reviews, pretty much everyone else thinks they totally suck too. One of them actually went flat on me on the way to Seattle last year, and I had to replace it at the last minute. So right now my car has one unmatched tire on, which is not only dangerous from a traction perspective, but actually somewhat illegal I think.

Unfortunately for me, my car takes performance 17″ tires, which means they are not only expensive (close to $200 a tire), but also generally soft (which means they wear out faster). So I’m probably looking at dropping close to $1,000 sometime soon to replace all of them. But I only have about 20% of the tread left on them, and don’t really want to go through another winter with a car that feels more like a toboggan on the road.

I scanned Costco online, but all the tires they have for my car pretty much suck. Canadian Tire was no different either. So I’m not sure where to go. I’ll probably have to do a pile of research online and try to find something that is decent for my car. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.