Yesterday I took my 2000 Saturn SL2 in for inspection and two tires. Turned out it needed new front brake pads, and I decided to get the rotors too while I was spending all my Christmas money.
Anyway, in re tires: I got the car in April 2003 with 31K miles on it and what I'm pretty sure were the original tires. They were OK, but not great; a bit noisy at times. I decided to cross my fingers and try to make it through last winter with them, and for the most part they did fine.
When I got the car inspected in May, (expired in April, then expired again in November to match the registration; PA is weird), the rear tires did not pass inspection because of dry rot. The front ones were OK, but down to about 6/32 or 7/32 tread at best. I knew they would also have to be replaced for this winter.
Anyway, I replaced the rear tires with a set of 2 Hankook Mileage Plus all-seasons. Put them on the front, moved the older tires to the back. No problems all summer and fall.
Decided this week to get snow tires for the front and run the Hankook Mileage Plus pair on the rear. Figured I'd try Blizzaks; heard nothing but good things about them apart from the noise issue, and if you drive a Saturn on roads around here you can't be too picky about noise....
The guy at the tire shop yesterday told me he could only sell Blizzaks in sets of 4. Said it was not his idea; it came from the company: 4 tires or nothing. At first I thought he was kidding, then figured he was trying to pressure me into buying 4 tires instead of 2.
Nope. Turned out he was dead serious and was quite happy to sell me two snow tires for the front---just not Blizzaks.
Weird. Has anyone else been through this? The issue seems to be liability, in case someone who knows even less about cars than I buys brand new Blizzaks and runs them along with a couple of crappy bald all-seasons. in that case, the car could swing around in a panic stop, if the Blizzak end stops and the crappy-tire-end doesn't. At least that's what the tire shop manager said.
So, since 4 Blizzaks was out of my price range and I saw no reason not to run the excellent all-seasons that were only a few months old, I wound up buying two Hankook 404 winter tires for the front, and moved the Hankook all-seasons---still in good shape, with less than 10K miles on them---to the rear.
That should get me through the winter. It's fairly bad here at times in the foothills of the Poconos in northeatern PA, but seldom impassable.
Anyways, I'm curious about the Blizzak "4 tires or forget it" policy. Is this true all over? Also, anyone on here who's an expert in winter driving: what do you think of running 2 new Hankook snow tires up front and 2 nearly new Hankook all-seasons in the rear; would I have been better off just sticking to 4 all-seasons, as long as the tread was OK?
TIA.
Regards,
Eric M