Tires Pirelli or Continental

O.K I did it. Got the Contintal Cross Contact UHP 285/50/18 put on this afternoon. Driving home they seemed to be very quiet and smooth running.

Everything appears to fit well. The ride is smooth with the 275 40ZR 19 105 Load Pirelli P-Zero Rosso tires. These are 3-season tires - turn-in is sharper and they are fun on highway on-ramps. The car is more "tossable" and fun to drive

I have the Pirelli Nero M&S. A very good tire in all regards. Quiet, smooth, decent ride, wet and dry capabilities, and they last a long time compared to MXes or Azenis.

I'll admit that the conjecture about the P Zero Neros had me a little bit worried, too. The only thing different is that I also had mine siped by the installer. We had our first real snow last week (4-6" of heavy, slushy stuff) and the Pirelli's were great! Lots of traction. Very controllable. I'm sure that dedicated snow tires would be better, but I'm very pleased so far.

Glad to hear it!!!! My wife forced me to stop being cheap. She insisted that I get the set of P Zero Nero M+S early last month as a precaution since the F1s are supposed to turn to stone in cold temperatures. I'm glad I listed to her. We recently had a bit of a cold snap that would have taxed the F1s. Now that I know you've had good performance in the snow, I'm even happier and I know now that I should be good for the winter (Maryland - Mid-Atlantic Winter that is).

I too was pleasantly surprised with their performance. We've received 3"-4" in the last couple day here in Utah, and I've gone out searching for bad roads and have no problems at all with anything that I've come up against. Whether the ESP is on or off you just point it and go. I find them completely acceptable for an all-season tire, and will gladly buy them again when I need new tires.

Finally I can provide some feedback for anyone wondering how these tires perform in the winter snow and ice. Honestly, after reading a number of posts where people were critical of tires of this type I expected handling just a bit better than an ice-skate... (IMHO) these tires did a whole lot better than I expected. I had a number of unplowed side streets with 4-6" of snow depth to navigate in the early morning as well as a combination of slush and iced over roads and I had no problems to speak of.

I was told to run right around 40psi in my Continental ExtremeContact tires. I was running about 38 in my Michelins with no adverse effects.

They were replaced with 205/65 X 15 Continentals on VW alloys (15X7) and after 15,000km still look like new, but they are noisy.

I certainly hope they've improved them since '99, because mine were definitely Craptinentals. It was like driving on roller skates.