Tires BRIDGESTONE or Achilles

I use Blizzak WS80's and a couple 50lb sandbags in the trunk. No issues as long as there isn't a shit ton of snow. I still avoid all steep hills.

I have blizzaks and Mrs. Krieg had ice guards on her last car. Both are excellent snow tires, and I never noticed a difference in the wet.

I'm a big fan of the Bridgestone Blizzak tires (in your case, WS80).

As a counterpoint to the Michelin PSS, I have Bridgestone S04 Pole Position tires and have been very happy with them. Dry and wet performance has been excellent.

They're sort of expensive I think, but the Bridgestone Battlax S20 is really nice in the wet. I had Pirelli Diablo Corsas and moved away from them specifically because of their poor performance in the wet.

Saab with Potenza RE970AS Pole Position tires. Best 3 season tire IMO.

Myself I am on stock breaks with upgraded components. I am running 18x8.5 235/40/18 Bridgestone(RE71R) VMR v810 One thing is when or if you lower the car the 8.5 at ET45 wheel might rub.

Stock bridgstones suck in the snow, the best systems can't help wrong tires for the conditions. 18" X-ice3's, have PP and Jb1 power and the traction systems are very impressive in my opinion. The car limits the power aggressively to maintain traction and control even in very slick conditions (good thing).

I had Ecopias (EDIT: EL-400s) on my Mazda3. They would not die. At like 90k miles I replaced them because they had gotten hard and the snow traction declined... they still had a decent amount of tread left.

I have the Bridgestone Potenza's that came with my car. I complained about road noise at 5000 miles and VW said "all the GTI's are like that". Then it got louder. So now the car has 16,000 miles on it. It sounds like a 747 is approaching the runway. I will NEVER purchase a Bridgestone product in the future. Anyone else have issues with the Bridgestone Potenza