JimGnitecki

This is my first winter with my C63 and the last few days have been bad.

I am a pretty recent transplant to Vancouver Island - September of 2016. Supposedly we historically get very little ice and snow here - that's one of the key reasons we moved here - but I guess the past 2 winters have been "unusual" then, because last winter was very bad (but I had a different car then), and this winter just got ugly within the past few days. Normally, we apparently got a lot of rain in the winter, with ice and snow being rare, but within the past week and a half we have gotten real snow. And, since the temperature has been slightly colder than the supposed normal, it has NOT melted away the same day it falls like it supposedly did before, but rather has either remained as a very light (maybe 1 inch?) snow cover, or turned into slush and then rutted, but not very thick, snow pack with ice in some parking areas.

When I bought my 2012 C63 coupe last spring, it had almost new Toyo Proxes Plus 4 tires in the correct MB-recommended 19 inch size sizes front and back, and these are prominently marked as "Mud and snow" tires. Ha!

I have previously lived in REAL wintery spots like Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Toronto Ontario, Canada, and Minneapolis, Minnesota for many years at a time, and have almost always run "V8 high performance" cars, which included 4 Corvettes and half a dozen Mustang GTs, as well as a number of pickup trucks. I have always used my cars as daily drivers - no "winter beaters" for wintry or wet weather. I've driven those 4 Corvettes, with their normal "summer high performance" tires right after, or DURING 6"+ snowstorms and NEVER got stuck or slid. (I am a pretty experienced winter driver)

But now . . .

At church last Sunday I had parked my C63 nose down on a VERY gentle downslope, on less than an inch of snow over gravel. When I tried to back out after the service, using "Comfort reverse" as opposed to my normal "Sport" (comfort uses 2nd gear from a stop in both forward and reverse), the tires immediately just spun. I had to have 3 friends push the car out of the parking spot.

On Tuesday, we parked the C63 in a snow covered gravel parking lot at a nearby coastline beach for 40 minutes. The nose of the car was on a slight UPHILL When we returned, again the car was unable to back out of the slot, even though there was a slight DOWNHILL slope in trying to do so! (Maybe the warm tires melted the snow under them and then it refroze while we hiked for 40 minutes?). Again it took a couple of people pushing to get it to where it got traction.

With both of these incidents, I was to put it mildly, pretty surprised, based on my prior experience with high performance rear wheel drive V8 cars on snow - many of which did not have the traction control now standard on most cars!

Because our weather is supposed to be so mild here, because I am retired and so don't commute, and because the vast majority of our driving is short urban trips right here in town, with only a highway trip once per week typically, and NOT schedule-constrained so I can simply avoid "bad weather", I have resisted getting snow tires. I dislike the idea of ugly steel wheels, "square" tire size, and twice-yearly wheel/tire changes. But now, I am reassessing. And frankly, I'm not at all sure that winter tires would make enough of a difference based on what I experienced these past few days.

It's made more complicated by 3 things that are not "the car's fault":

- My wife dislikes the car and won't drive it. She views it as too complex, intimidating, and too powerful. This traction problem does not help her perception . . .

- My wife is currently 3/4 done a 9 month career training course that will require her to begin driving to and from work daily, in any weather, and of course I had no idea she would dislike the car when we bought it last Spring

- A new discovery mentioned only recently to us is that my wife's new career will require her to go to multiple different locations, sometimes daily, and park in typically tight parking lots with high public turnover where door dings or worse become a real probability

The C63 obviously does not "fit" too well now given these 3 recent realities.

Yeah, we could buy a second car but that seems stupid because only one of us works, so we need only one car, and because given our government-run insurance, and despite both of us having 40+ year perfect driving records, it costs $140 per MONTH to insure the ONE car (and, incredibly, another $143 per mo th for the motorcycle!). And I really don't want to maintain, and hand wash every week, TWO cars (no decent car wash in town so I have to do it myself).

I have been thinking a LOT about what to do with all this, even before this traction issue arose, and the addition of the traction issue just added an important safety dimension - and sheer practicality dimension - that I am not confident that winter tires would solve.

So, as one step in helping me sort this all out, I'm going to ask:

Do winter tires make a BIG improvement on the C63 - big enough to make the car safe in wintry conditions, or would that be throwing money away? I know some of you on the forum have or are running winter tires seasonally. Does it make the car reliably usable for daily commuting or am I kidding myself that that would make sufficient difference?

Jim G

Accidental L8 apex

The skinniest snows on a cheap set of wheels is always cheaper and/or easier than getting stuck, insurance headaches or driving something boring. Blizzaks took my C55 from.deathly scary in Winter to safe for Grandma to drive. Night and day difference.

roadkillrob

I run snows on mine and makes it useable in snow, all seasons are marginal at best on any car in the snow let alone a 500 hp rear wheel drive car!

MTV10

I daily mine year round.

Slap a set of snow tires on it and tell your wife to stop being so soft

skratch77

I leased a crv for 250 a month 900 for fees out of pocket.

our cable bill is higher lol

JimGnitecki

Yeah, but you'd feel stupid paying $250 for the lease and another $140 for the insurance!! That's just wrong. Ok, I assume that the insurance on the right (cheap) car would be lower, but I actually don't know any friends whose monthly insurance is significantly less. In my case, I would also need to rent another undergorund parking space for $50 per month. It adds up . . .

Jim G

JimGnitecki

I should have asked in my original post: Does adding say 100 or 150 lb of bagged sand into the trunk (like guys do with pickup trucks) make enough difference to make it worthwhile?

Jim G

Ambystom01

Yes, proper snow tires make a world of difference. I'm in Edmonton and with Michelin Alpin PA4s, my C63 was no more difficult to drive than my Jetta TDI on Blizzaks. Putting the traction control into sport mode can help too.

JimGnitecki

1. Why does putting the traction control into "Sport" help?

2. What sizes front and back did you go to on the Michelin Alpin PA4s? And, are you 18" or 19" on your summer tires/wheels?

3. Studded or non-studded? (I know the legality varies from province ot province)

4. What did you use for winter wheels?

Jim G

Ambystom01

1. Allows more slippage which can help if you think you're stuck. The traction control aggressively cuts power which prevents you from spinning initially to get grip.

2. Stock size 18" tires.

3. Non-studded. I'd only get studded if I drove on ice or packed snow a lot. Most of the time, winter roads here are just cold pavement with maybe some surface snow.

4. Stock 18" wheels.

ritalin

235/40/18 all around
Tc in sport, never an issue. And this is with headers, tune. Only prob is killing one set of rears per winter.

JimGnitecki

Yes, I guess the wear on the soft winter tires IS another consideration, especially on a C63.

Jim G

rinopiroddi

I live in the interior of BC not far from you. I too have driven several rwd performance cars through many BC winters but the C63 is a different animal. Even with 4 snow tires...you can't really enjoy the car. So yes I park mine and do the dreaded winter beater. My winter beater is a 2010 Taurus SHO...awd, lowered with 4 snows...good fun and traction when needed. There are lots of awd cheap fun good winter beaters. Just my 2c worth.

JimGnitecki

I would hate to park an expensive car for 4 or 5 months per year. The car continues to depreciate, the insurance continues, and it's not good for a car to just sit . . .

I had no problems like this last winter (which was much worse) with the Mustang GT with the Roush kit and 6-speed manual . . .

Damn.

Jim G

Savien

I got a set of 4 18" 235 width blizzaks for winter last year. The control and grip they offered in the snow was night and day difference over my summer tires, as of course is expected. However, I was very surprised that the handling and braking were significantly WORSE than summer tires on dry pavement. Even in temperatures well below freezing. The car felt floaty and much less responsive in turns, and also felt squirmy when braking hard. The braking distance is also increased by (20 -30%).

I was led to believe that under 40 degrees F, the softer winter tire compound would offer more grip on dry pavement as well as on snow and ice. I did some of my own research on the topic and it seems that the tire manufacturers all know that winter tires perform worse than summer tires on cold dry pavement, but they never mention it because it would hurt their ability to sell more tires. I know that my rear winters are only 235s, and summers were 255s, which would affect the braking and handling some, but 40mm shouldn't make that huge of a difference.
Obviously if it snows frequently, winter tires are the way to go, but if you have the option of not going out on the 3-5 days of snow per year, then i would recommend doing so and not switching to winters, since yo sacrifice safety when no snow ice is present.

Here is a guy who recently did a comparison of the braking distance on winters / summer tires in below freezing but dry conditions.

Ambystom01

That guy also commented that winter tires felt better than summer tires, the opposite of what you said.

A lot of summer tires hate sub 7 degree (Celsius) weather, and can break as a result.

Ryan951s

Hi Jim,

Having lived in Victoria my entire life, I can say that the past couple years have been a bit unusual. Having said that, my wife and I have a Q7 that we use when needed and the 63 can stay in the garage.

if you want, a friend of mine is Parts manager at Audi and got me a great deal on 4 replica AMG wheels that you could put snows on. The wheels were 18x8.5 with a 45mm offset and fit the car perfectly ... total cost including taxes was something like $900 for the wheels. They did have a split 5-spoke design in 19mm if you wanted as well, but I'd personally stick with 18s for winters.

another option is to keep your eye on Kijiji ... there usually seems to be some folks in Alberta selling their winter wheel/tire set that you could pick up for a bit less.

PM me if you'd like me to introduce you to my friend and talk about an extra set of wheels.

Good luck,

Ryan

JimGnitecki

Thanks for the nice offer, Ryan. I might end up PMing you. I hate to spend a couple thousand on a set of tires and wheels, but it may turn out to be necessary. But given my wife's aversion to the C63 (discussed above), and both her and my reluctance to undertake the wasteful financial and other costs of running two cars in a family that puts on only 10k kilometers per year, I need to seriously think about whether my pleasure with the C63 is a good enough justification to keep the C63 as our family car. Ever since the traction issue came to light ("the straw that broke the camel's back"), my wife has been strongly encouraging me to look at a different solution, and you know how unhappy an unhappy wife can make her husband. I feel bad because the last 2 cars I have bought for us she has not liked, and I sort of owe her a car she truly likes at this point. My 2012 C63 is really nice with only 52K kilometers on it, and it would be difficult to again get something equally exciting without spending a lot of money.

Jim G

zcct04

Canadian cars have multiple gears in reverse?

Vladds

My car did something similar with yours: would not move up my driveway for 1 foot in 1 inch of snow, on a very mild slope up, with continental DWS, where the S shows on the thread, confirming that the snow capabilities are still there.
This car requires better tire support than other RWD cars.
I got blizzaks.
They come narrower from the factory as far as the contact patch, for the same sizing.
Haven't tried the car in snow yet with these, let's see what happens. They feel quite different in the dry than my summer tires or than the all seasons before them.
I like how they feel, because I feel that they reveal the true handling of the car. I feel I know what the car will do next, the handling limit is more transparent.

There is a third category these days: performance winter tires. Pirelli Sottozero and such.
I don't know if they're enough to make this car go through snow with some level of comfort and be predictable.

JimGnitecki

I BELIEVE that all Facelift C63s do this. I culd be wrong, but I am reasonably confident that I read it somewhere in an MB document - possibly a press release on the MCT transmission. I believe low traction starts were one of the reasons MB did this.

Jim G

JimGnitecki

Thanks, Vladds, for the actual user testimonial. I may have a very hard time reassuring my wife on this car.

Jim G

ec_nova

actually ALL MB's with the 722.9 have 2 reverse gears. It is because when shifting from one gear to another it engages one solenoid and releases another. in comfort you start in 2nd, sport, 1st. So you have a "1st gear" reverse and a "2nd gear" reverse as a result. This only changed with the new 725 9 speed which only has one reverse.

otakki

Great infos with a good video link! Was suspecting about the difference but didn't know it until now. I have heard others mentioning that even though summer tires do fine on cold dry road, there is a risk of cracking the sidewall due to the summer tire's less pliable characteristic at extremely low temperature--not sure if that is true or not.

CarHopper

6+ inches of snow in vettes on summer tires? Mmm.... k.

Anyways, get snow tires. Yes, they do make a big difference.

Recommend hakkapeliitta's. Wear much better than Blizzaks. Get 235/40/18 all around, switch after a season, and they'll last you.