Winter Driving

Winter Driving (with your Mustang)...

We are constantly getting buried under layers of snow during the winter months here in the Northeast...

Since my Mustang is my daily driver (and not a Driveway Queen), I was faced with a dilemma. Do I trade her in for a FWD or SUV? I actually contemplated this, and found myself at a local Ford dealer test-driving a left-over 2000 SVT Contour. Try as I might to convince myself that this little 200HP pocket rocket was the equivalent to a 4-door FWD Mustang, I found myself asking "Where's the beef?" The answer to this question is "From 3,500RPM and upwards". Although the little Contour looks, handles and brakes like a Champ, I'm not into red-lining the engine before every shift just to get some performance out of it.

Luckily the dealer low-balled me on my trade-in, and tried to get top dollar for the SVT, so I walked! On the way home from the dealer, I came up with a much better plan. Call The Tire Rack, and order a set of snow & ice tires for the winter months. Well, long story short, this is exactly what I did, and I would recommend this solution to anyone who plans to drive their prized steed over snow and ice packed roads.

For $800, I got a set of 4 Blizzak MZ-01 225/55-QR16 (Q = 99mph) snow & ice tires mounted (and balanced) on '99 Mustang GT 16" aluminum rims, delivered to my front door. All you gotta do is mount them! This only took me a little over one hour to do, and that was armed with only the factory scissor jack.

Before... Little Silver" rides on meaty BF Goodrich CompTA 245/45HR17's...

Blizzak's are on the left; CompTA's on the right... (The first component of winter tire construction are new compounds that are softer and able to maintain their grip and malleability at lower temperatures.)

Note the aggressive tread pattern on the Blizzaks... (The desired means of increasing traction is to offer plenty of lateral biting edges - lateral density - that create tractive gripping forces with the ground. Siping, the small transverse slits on the outer edges of the tread and on the tread blocks, contributes to the tire maintaining traction. Under side loads when cornering, sipes on the outer edge of a tire are squeezed together, resulting in the tread acting as a solid block. Bridgestone's Blizzak family of winter tires use a unique tube multi-cell tread compound. Microfibers dissolve in the curing process, leaving channels that cut through and disperse water more efficiently, improving snow and ice performance.)