`Winter' tire keeps on sticking in hot spring

JOHN MAHLER FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Yokohama's W.drive "winter" tire is no slouch in winter but a surprise hot-weather performer in spring.

John Mahler

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

During the bleak and cold of winter, Yokohama issued the W.drive, another high-performance winter tire, with minimal fanfare.

So why write about it now? Because this is a step into the best of all worlds: a winter tire designed to stay on the car all year long.

Tires that can do this and grip year round, I like to call "all-weather tires." The phrase "all-season" has been taken, and overused, abused by most tire companies – it is no longer worthy of any meaning.

This new Yoko has the Transport Canada Alpine snow rating, and it earns it.

In winter testing in deep fresh snow, and packed snow and ice, this tire dug for traction and delivered. It easily handled an uphill section on my street with 16 cm of snow on unplowed pavement. It had to fight for grip but it won the battle.

For ice, the W.drive is quite heavily siped, so it does well, but not as well as a multi-cell compound winter tire. On cold pavement, this tire is flawless.

This Yokohama looks like a summer high-performance rain tire. It has rounded shoulders for great control under heavy sideload. Tread blocks are big and there are three major channels wide enough to evacuate slush.

Enough of winter: Now that the instant summer is upon us, I continued to test it and tried to defeat it, but it can take a licking and keep on ticking.

Heat is the enemy of every tire. Get it hot and the rubber wears faster, the sharp edges of the tread blocks become blunted, and – worse case scenario – the rubber comes off in little chunks. This is especially true for winter tires in summer.

They are designed to stay flexible at low temperatures; in summer, they can't remain stiff.

I tried to get the W.drive to cry "uncle" when I pushed it lap after lap around a skidpad in this spring's heat wave. No luck. It gripped as well as any high-performance all-season tire I have had on a BMW.

Yokohama claims proprietary compounding to make this tire flexible when cold and stiff when required by heat. Yokohama, in fact, has a patent pending on a chemical they have named Zeruma. This asymmetric tire also uses polyhedral 3D sipes to keep the tread blocks from flexing in hard summer loading.

Among its other characteristics, this tire rides like a charm; it is smooth and calm over pavement cracks. If you're used to high speed-rated touring tires, this model will be a happy ride for you.

So what's not to like? There are only 13 high-performance sizes available in 16- to 18-inch diameters. All sizes are V-speed rated and have low aspect ratios.

As for cost, the W.drive is on the higher end of the spectrum since it is intended, at this stage, only for high-performance sedans.

A P225/50R17 lists for $400, but Revolution Tire in Barrie discounts it to $280.

What a great concept: a winter tire you can drive all year long. Now let's get this concept to filter down to more ordinary high sidewall sizes.

More videos from Wheels.ca and our partners