After my last near-death experience taking my goodyear eagle F1 GS D3s on snow, I decided my street tires were going to have to be all-seasons. I got some Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Positions. They grip fine in rain and even seem reasonably grippy when dry, but they have two fairly major faults.
First and worst, when it's cold they get a flat spot overnight, so the car vibrates badly for the first mile or two until they warm up and the flat spot goes away. That's with tire pressures anywhere from 30 to 36 psi.
Second, the car simply doesn't track straight with these tires. With my previous 3 sets of tires, the car would pretty much go straight all by itself. With these tires, the car wanders all over the road, but it doesn't follow grooves. I think this is usually griped about as "lack of road feel", but it really just makes the car a bit more tiring to drive since I have to make constant small corrections to keep it going straight. The alignment is stock and suspension is in good condition, so I'm sure it's these tires.
Other than these two gripes though, the tires are fine. I haven't tried them in the snow or on ice yet but they can't possibly be worse than the last set of summer tires I had. They are reasonably quiet except when they have that damn flat spot after sitting all night in the cold, and gas mileage is up by 1 or 2 mpg from the summer tires so rolling resistance is probably slightly reduced.
Of course, they don't look "cool" at all... No style points whatsoever. But that's fine with me, I got them to keep me on the road, not look cool.
