After consulting with everyone on the planet including you folks here and researching winter tires, I finally had them put on today. I decided on Toyo Garits 225/55/17 all around mounted on winter alloys. Tires seem to be a VERY subjective subject. Everyone seems to have their favourite and purchasing criteria differs. Some by safety, some by price, etc. These are not cheap but I think they will be great for my needs. I think I did OK dealwise. The local Infinite stealership wanted $1700 for rims and tires before the 13% HST and installation. Nissan quoted me $1700 and change including tax but not installation. I got them from a local tire shop. Garits, alloy rims, installed, HST included- $1400 and change out the door. Plus, they are going to store them for me, change them out next year and do the 100 km torquing all for FREE. They usually charge for storage but he said since I probably paid a lot for the G, he would do it for free. Great shop, eh? A lot of cash all at once, but works out to about 350 per tire and rim and I'm ok with that. So, hopefully I'm all set for old man winter. Thanks to everyone for the opinions and advice.

Mark

 

Good luck my friend! Just remember winter tires don't make the car a tank! Drive safe!

 

sounds like a pretty solid deal to me. good job doing your research

 

Thanks and no worries....I taught winter driving on the streets and a skid pad for years.

 

Funny I just got home from swapping out my summers and first post I see is this. I probably could have waited another week or two as the weathers been ok in Toronto but with extreme summer performance tires on I didn't wanna risk it.

I have Toyo Garits as well, I don't have any complaints with them, probably not as good on grip as Blizzaks but overall quite good in terms of wear, road noise, handling etc. I will be going on my 5th season on these tires and even though there is still decent tread on them as I don't drive a lot (maybe 5-6000 kms every winter) they are def not as effective anymore. Hopefully we get another relatively mild winter and I can get by as my work is only 5 kms away. If I end up getting new tires in a month or two I was looking at Hankook I-Pikes, they have pretty decent reviews and and can be purchased locally at around $150 a piece in 215/55/17.

I think you got an ok deal considering the extra stuff they threw in, but did you consider purchasing a used set off Kijiji? I was looking around for tires the past couple of months and a bunch of people were selling rims and tire combos off G35s that were used only for one or two seasons for 6-700. A friend of mine bought a set of one season old Blizzaks with some decent looking rims for about 650 for his sedan.

 

I got a one season used Dunlop Winter 3D on alloy rims for 900$. The set up was 225/55/17 and 225/50/17. I was driving close 0C here in GTA on summer tires and it started getting bad, especially if it rained. They are filled with nitrogen but were a little defalted IMO (27.5 PSI) so I started filling them with air.

1400 sounds like a good deal for brand new. What do you guys think about Dunlop ? Tirerack had some good reviews