If you’ve had to daily the same rear-wheel drive car all throughout the winter, you’d know that winter tires are a must. When I was younger and far dumber than I currently am and quite broke, I had to tough it through the winter with summer tires. It wasn’t fun. Okay, actually it was kinda fun, because skids. However, I was stuck constantly and had many terrifying near-crashes. Automobile Mag is far smarter than I was and decided to avoid such stupid behavior by ordering a set of Pirelli Sottozero Serie II winter tires for their Four Seasons BMW M2.
With the proper tires, a rear-wheel drive performance car can be incredibly fun in the snow. The tires will insure that you have the proper grip on the road, that the cold won’t affect performance and that your braking times will be consistent even in freezing temps. But they will still allow for some tail-out fun on powder. It’s also fun to power out of a snow bank with traction control off and rear-wheel drive. That’s one of the things they did with their M2 and it’s the sort of thing that makes rear-wheel drive in the snow a ton of fun.
Apparently, the Pirelli winter shoes didn’t seem to upset the handling or ride characteristics of the car, either. Sometimes, sports cars can suffer from performance losses with winter tires, as they don’t typically grip as well as summer tires. But, if anything, they actually improved the car’s cold-weather performance. So any tough guys out there who think that winter tires cost you some of your cool-guy performance, they actually grip better than summer tires when the temps drop low.
The only real issue Automobile had with their M2 so far was rusting brake rotors in the winter. This is extremely common in harsh winters. They had the car sitting for a few days in a rough storm. So all of the snow, road salt and freezing temps caused the rotors to rust. While this is common though, usually a few miles of driving and braking rids the rotors of their rust. But it took almost 200 miles for Automobile’s M2 brakes to sound and feel normal again.
Overall, though, the BMW M2 provided to be a fun winter ride that offered rear-wheel drive shenanigans in the snow. If you want the same experiences from your M2, make sure you get some snow tires.
[Source: Automobile Mag]
