Did winter tyres make a big difference to bmw?

rover25

Considering buying a 320d bmw but live in pretty rural area. Only fear would be icy weather and poor performance from bmw.
Anyone buy winter tyres for their bmw and see a big improvement?

mattyprice4004

What year? A certain era (think it was 2000-2005) have an issue with weak turbochargers and flaps in the inlet manifold that come loose and destroy your engine.

rover25

late 2005 newer model or 2006.

mattyprice4004

You should be OK, I think. It's a buyers market, so remember to haggle like there's no tomorrow

Edit: Not sure if the late 05 / 06 320d has the same engine as my 75 CDTi, but it's pretty poor on fuel in all this cold weather. Just a heads up.

petrolhead69

about 10 years ago I had 15" cheap part worn all season m+s tyres from the scrappy on an e36 and it was unstoppable, I overtaken a freelander and a crv wheelspinning uncontrollably into the curb on the way up a steep icy hill from corstorphine up to a fancy hotel, it was a wee bit slidy but perfecly controllable so I'd imagine decent new winter tyres should be great. I was speaking to a guy with an e39 530d while we were waiting at farmer autocare getting alignment done and he swears by having a second set of 16" wheels with winter tyres on to replace the 18" summer wheels.

Weird_Nev

They make a huge, huge diffrence.

As an anecdote, a few years back we drove my cousins BMW 330d (E46 vintage) to the Alps for a skiing holiday. It was on Nokian Winter tyres. We got there, in the middle of the night, and then had to climb 20kms into the alps on snow covered roads. Well, fisrt there was slush, then ice, then packed snow. We drove past an abandoned Range rover. We drove past an abandoned subaru. We got to the top absolutely fine, no dramas, and it was basically down to having the right tyres for the job.

"Rear wheel drive" is no reason not to buy a BMW - in fact if you're a keen driver it's a good reason TO buy a BMW. There were perhaps one or two days when Rear wheel drive cars were worse off than anyone else in the last 2 years - the rest of the time, it's fine. TO be honest, if a RWD car is stuck in the snow then there's no guarantee that a front wheel drive car will be any safer and you should probably stay at home anyway.

In short, choose the car you want, and equip it properly and you'll be fine. At this rate, it looks like people won't even get the benefit of winter tyres this year.

mattyprice4004 wrote: »

What year? A certain era (think it was 2000-2005) have an issue with weak turbochargers and flaps in the inlet manifold that come loose and destroy your engine.

They're "Swirl flaps" and IIRC on BMW's they are only fitted to automatics. It's to obtain a cleaner burn at idle and help emissions.
I don't think there's any evidence that BMW turbos are more or less prone to failure than anyone elses. They're all made by Garrett/KKK anyway.

Stonk

My brother-in-law's 2006 5-Series was stuck on his drive for 2 or 3 weeks last winter in Staffordshire. It needed to go uphill for 2 metres at a 5 degree incline to leave the drive, and it couldn't. So I'd say winter tyres are an essential.

A BMW salesman once tried to sell me the "keen driver" aspect of their RWD decision. I pointed out the poor winter performance, and he had no compelling answer. All he could manage was "well, it's only a couple of days a year!"

Weird_Nev

Stonk wrote: »

A BMW salesman once tried to sell me the "keen driver" aspect of their RWD decision. I pointed out the poor winter performance, and he had no compelling answer. All he could manage was "well, it's only a couple of days a year!"

Well, it is....
and if your brother had been prepared with salt, grit, a shovel and winter tyres then he would have been fine. There's no guarantee a FWD car would have got off of that drive!

Gloomendoom

Throw some bags of sand or gravel in the boot. It makes the world of difference.

Cheap too.

wba31

A friend of mine went to a demo in Tamworth Snowdome last winter for winter tyres, he works for a tyre manufacture.
they used BMW 1 series, one with standard tyres, one with winter.
the summer tyres BMW started to accelerate, and just sat there with the wheels spinning. the winter tyres one started to accelerate, and managed to drive up the slope in the snowdome...

however, my feeling on winter tyres is that as good as they are, and will stop me sliding into something or someone, the car behind me if on summer tyres is just gonna smash into me. if everyone gets winter tyres im sure they'll be worthwhile, if not, i'd rather just leave the car at home...

gilbert_and_sullivan

Pity the winter has been so mild, with a third severe winter to put even more people off you might have been able to pick one up quite cheaply.

People amaze me they really do.

You hear of some who have sold decent cars really cheaply and spent thousands of pounds to get new cars (that will be no better because they have stupidly wide low profile summer tyres too), but can't see the point in spending a few hundred quid to equip their perfectly good car with the correct tyres for the job.

Thank goodness they do throw their money away though, the country would be even more bankrupt if people had some sense.

My RWD vehicles on winter tyres go everywhere without the slightest problem, i don't have the option of not going out in the bad weather, nor do any of us who have proper hands on jobs.