| All season tires vs. summer tires
Hey guys, I'm currently running Yoko ES100's but am thinking of my next set of tires (maybe in another 12,000-15,000 miles).
My alignment shop highly recommended Michellin PS2's. He says they reduce the tramlining effect the most compared to any other tire and from what I've read they are arguably one of the best tires money can buy (also one of the most expensive).
I live in WA state so the weather here in the winter is usually pretty mild (low 40's sometimes high 30's at worst). But there are a couple of weeks where it will get down to freezing and sometimes we can get some snow. When we get a significant amount of snow it will typically go unplowed for the first day or two because we do not have the manpower to clear the streets like other states in the snowbelt do since we are not used to snowy winters at all. We also do not use salt here, just sand and some de-icer solution (which will get overwhelmed if it snows hard enough).
Anyways, I was considering an all-season tire next time around. Perhaps the Michellin A/S or the Yoko Advan S4 (or any of the other ones recommended in the tire forum). My worry though is my mechanic told me an all-season tire will perform just as bad as a summer tire in snow and he said I might be wasting my money. He said if I wanted to drive in snow then I should get a separate set of snow tires. I figure if I had to drive in snow I would just drive in light snow (say 1" maybe, 2" tops) but more likely on roads where there was snow but where you could still see the road (e.g. roads that have been driven on by other cars). In the event of heavy snow my other car has AWD so I would take that but it would be nice to know that I could take the CLK out if I really had to. I'm not too keen on having a separate set of snow/summer tires though. Since it rarely drops below freezing here I'm not certain if I can take advantage of the compound differences between a winter tire vs. an all-season tire.
Do all-season tires wear less than summer tires? They probably won't grip as well in the summer but I can't say I push the car to the limits quite often.
Are all-season tires quieter or noisier than summer tires? TBH, I can't tell if a tire is noisy or not. I figure all the noise is road noise and dependent on the surface.
Sorry for all the writing! | 
