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Drivers these days are spoiled by technologies like all-wheel drive and traction and stability control. While these electronic minders can make a real difference in the performance of a car, they don’t work well in winter unless you’ve got some way to help the car stick to the road. That makes your choice of tire as important as your choice of vehicle. Nearly every car today is sold with summer or all-season tires. But when such a tire meets snow-covered (or merely cold and dry) roads, the rubber compound — designed to be soft at 70 degrees — becomes rigid and offers less grip. Worse, as it rolls the tire warms, melting the snow and creating a slick microfilm of water. Suddenly that slippery summer tire can’t grip and your car is hydroplaning. Next stop: the nearest ditch. To avoid this you need dedicated winter tires, which use rubber formulated to be more pliable in cold temperatures, whether roads are wet or dry. They also typically have siping — hundreds of tiny cuts — in the treadwall that provides more contact surface with the snow and actively siphons away that film of water. Whether on a high-clearance SUV barreling through the back roads or on a low-slung 911 cruising to Cortina, there’s a tire out there that will keep you on the road the next time you head to the slopes.

SPORTS CAR
Carrera 4S: 18-inch Michelin Pilot Alpin; $205 each
Your 4S may have all-wheel drive, but if you plan to drive it in snow you need to give it more sure-footed traction. The smart choice is a fast V-rated tire, like the Alpin. It’s siped deeply enough to squeegee away water, but the five-block tread pattern isn’t so robust that you’ll feel like you’re driving a truck.
Skinny: A tire designed for sports-car drivers who see enough snow to need dedicated tires for winter, but don’t want to give up dry-weather performance.

SPORTS SEDAN
Cadillac CTS-4: 17-inch Dunlop Winter Sport M3 DSST; $170 each
Whether you own an all-wheel-drive or a rear-wheel-drive performance sedan, it’s likely your car is shod with run-flat tires. This is fantastic, even life-saving, technology, and there are now run-flat winter tires as well. The Winter Sport is a run-flat with all the standard advantages of a performance winter tire, including siping for better winter-weather traction as well as offset tread blocks to increase the biting edges for paddling through snow and slush.
Skinny: A low-profile performance winter tire designed to maintain strong handling for highway speeds. Plan B, for winters in Vail: In this case, you need a studless ice and snow tire like Michelin’s X-Ice, which is specifically designed to handle the season’s worst, including polished and black ice; $151 each.

LARGE SPORTS SEDAN
Lexus GS 460: 17-inch ContiWinter TS810 Sport; $206 each
These high-speed-rated Continentals were originally designed for winter autobahn driving in Germany. Your large Lexus or S-Class should enjoy enhanced performance when the temperature dips, since the tire is designed to provide confidence on dry, cold roads.
Skinny: These tires have tread rubber that stays pliable in the cold and wet and siping that provides more biting edges to grip in the snow.

CROSSOVER
BMW X6: 18-inch Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25 4X4; $246 each
You likely bought a crossover or SUV with more ground clearance with the idea that you could drive in heavy snow. To do that, replace your vehicle’s summer tires with a model like the Blizzak, which is speed-rated to be reasonably quiet and stable at highway speeds.
Skinny: These tires have the best cold-weather and foul-road-condition adhesion thanks to a road-gripping tread compound.

4X4 SUV
Range Rover: 19-inch Pirelli Scorpion Ice+Snow; $193 each
A Range Rover comes with ride height and traction control programs to enhance its off-pavement prowess, but even these devices won’t help if that high-performance summer rubber can’t grip the road. A severe-weather tire like the Pirelli Scorpion Ice+Snow is ideal because it has offset tread blocks that are deep enough to channel away snow and slush.
Skinny: Dedicated winter tires like this may feel a little squirmy when driven on a clear highway, but that design is a function of tread that moves to wash out water and snow.

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