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Winter's coming for Illinois shortly, and my new 07 6mt sedan has summer tires on. I live in Carbondale so its relatively warm, but in I go to Chicago for 1 month of the winter, and that would be a disaster with summer tires. I've never had a RWD manual in the snow before.

Will those rims be ok? I'm only going to be sporting them from Thanksgiving until Spring Break. As thats what fits well with my school schedule. Also what kind of tires would be the best to put on there? I don't have the highest budget but I want to keep my car and I as safe as possible.

Thanks
Nate

 

For snow you are better off with smaller wheels like 17's. I would buy a wheel tire package from the Tirerack and paired the wheels with Dunlop M3's or Bridgestone Blizzacks.

 

+1 on tirerack. Get the cheapest wheels 17" and Blizzaks and you'll be fine.

 

with or without the TPMS? That's the question. The price with is around a $1k, w/o is roughly $900. Hmmmmmmmm....lightle annoying light on the dash if selecting wheels without, or just eat the extra $350 to have them installed.....hmmmmmmm.......

 

This will also be my first year with a RWD vehicle in the snow. While Washington, DC generally has small snowfall, sometimes we still get hit pretty hard. Is the car manageable in the snow or does it perform fine in the snow with snow tires?

 

Forget the TPMS for your winter tires. You don't need them unless you can't check your own tire pressure.

 

Not sure how the 07 is as this will be my first winter with it. But my 06 was actually remarkalby good!

Not sure which model you have, but beleive it or not the LSD on the sport model makes a substantial difference. It prevents the wheel with less traction from spinning and thus putting the car at an awkward angle. This was a huge problem we had on our E320 that made it a royal PITA to drive in winter. I had 17's from tire rack with Michelin X-Ice and they were great. However I did switch back to my 18 summers to early and got caught a few times, and was again shocked how well it did. It slid more and braking was less confident but still was manageable in 2-3 inches of snow.

Who would have thought a performance option would help winter driving ... granted i've never driven a G without an LSD but i have driven other RWD cars and they were nightmares.

+1 on the tire rack 17's .... with 18's your limited to winted sports which do not perform as well as true winter's. Plus you pay an extra 40-50%

 

Just got 225/55/17 Blizzak WS 50 on the cheapest 17" ($99) from tire rack. No TPMS. Not worth it at $370 for a set of four. Total delivered $850.01.

 

I got my tires at Tirerack as well. Got tires and rims for under $700.

I'm using a stock set of sport 17's from an 03/04 sedan as my winter wheels.