OEM Bridgestone tires on Grand Touring terrible in snow - General Altimax Arctic good

I have seen posts to this effect and am just confirming that my experience has also been terrible with the original equipment all season Bridgestone tires on my 2013 Grand Touring. I ordered snow tires for my GT shortly after buying it on December 29th but they were not delivered before I had to drive in light snow. I think there was about 2-3" on the ground and the rear end broke loose while I was going around an exit ramp at 20 mph. The ABS kicked in as the CX-9 started to slide but this did not do much to save it. I lifted off the gas and that had more effect. This has never happened before with any of the 12 previous AWD and 4WD vehicles I have owned since 1990. I am an experienced winter driver - grew up in western PA and spent a lot of time in Vermont. These Bridgestone Dueler H/L 400 tires are treacherous even in moderate snow.

I installed 4 General Altimax Artic snow tires on 17" rims in the size recommended by Tire Rack and the difference is dramatic. We have had multiple big snow storms in January and February and the Altimax tires have performed very well. In my experience, the Michelin Latitude X-ice and Bridgestone Blizzak tires will outperform the Altimax tires but not by a wide margin. The Altimax tires are much quieter on dry pavement than the Blizzaks. I have been very satisfied with them in a broad range of winter conditions.

I gotta say I don't understand all the hate on the Bridgestone's.

Are they the best tire? No. But I have found them to be relatively quiet, good grip, and not that bad during our snowpocalypse. I have noticed the rear-end slide out a few times but I usually throw at least 80lbs of salt in the back and didn't have any in there when that happened. The reality is the back end is lighter and weight in the rear end of any car in the snow is a must. And this is with a new to us 11 G.T. with 36k miles on it. They are the OE tires so they are fairly worn but not at the wear bars yet. Just drove through 5.5" of snow on Valentine's day and with worn tires had no problem.

But I AM also looking for a different replacement. For $230/ea I feel like I should be hearing nothing but how great they are!

What do you plan on replacing them with?

I also bought the General Altimax Arctic tires for my wife's BMW E90 RWD and love them in the snow. I will say that they are pretty squirmy at higher speeds with a lot of minute corrections needed. Of course this is at 75 mph on the interstate so if you slow it down a bit it is less of an issue. I also pumped them up 5 PSI over the recommended settings for the all-season tires and that helped a bit.

I just happened to buy a snow blower and winter tires (for wife's car) this year. The snowiest officially in Indianapolis. What luck!

(As for my winter driving experience. Grew up in Northern Indiana with Lake Michigan "lake effect" snow. 4-6" is a big deal here in Indy; Northern IN it is typical. My wife complains about how she NEEDS AWD and I remind her how I drive, daily, a RWD vehicle with all-season tires (The loved to be hated Goodyear RS-A.) and I never get stuck! And our city is terrible about plowing (plows 1" off the ground to save the plows and manhole covers) and almost never plow the side streets which I drive daily.)

S197GT said:

I gotta say I don't understand all the hate on the Bridgestone's.

Are they the best tire? No. But I have found them to be relatively quiet, good grip, and not that bad during our snowpocalypse. I have noticed the rear-end slide out a few times but I usually throw at least 80lbs of salt in the back and didn't have any in there when that happened. The reality is the back end is lighter and weight in the rear end of any car in the snow is a must. And this is with a new to us 11 G.T. with 36k miles on it. They are the OE tires so they are fairly worn but not at the wear bars yet. Just drove through 5.5" of snow on Valentine's day and with worn tires had no problem.

But I AM also looking for a different replacement. For $230/ea I feel like I should be hearing nothing but how great they are!

What do you plan on replacing them with?

I also bought the General Altimax Arctic tires for my wife's BMW E90 RWD and love them in the snow. I will say that they are pretty squirmy at higher speeds with a lot of minute corrections needed. Of course this is at 75 mph on the interstate so if you slow it down a bit it is less of an issue. I also pumped them up 5 PSI over the recommended settings for the all-season tires and that helped a bit.

I just happened to buy a snow blower and winter tires (for wife's car) this year. The snowiest officially in Indianapolis. What luck!

(As for my winter driving experience. Grew up in Northern Indiana with Lake Michigan "lake effect" snow. 4-6" is a big deal here in Indy; Northern IN it is typical. My wife complains about how she NEEDS AWD and I remind her how I drive, daily, a RWD vehicle with all-season tires (The loved to be hated Goodyear RS-A.) and I never get stuck! And our city is terrible about plowing (plows 1" off the ground to save the plows and manhole covers) and almost never plow the side streets which I drive daily.)

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My personal experience with the OEM Dueler tires in the snow is right on with all the complaints--ABS kicks in way early, and the car seems to slide forever. My other car is an AWD sedan, and the stopping ability is MUCH better. I just can't say whether another tire will be better--maybe the width of the 20" GT tire just makes them bad in the snow--but if you look at the Tire Rack consumer surveys, the Dueler has terrible snow scores, especially when you compare to the Bridgestone Dueler Ecopia or the Yokahama Parada. I have to believe there is something to these scores...

tex2670 said:

I just can't say whether another tire will be better--maybe the width of the 20" GT tire just makes them bad in the snow--but if you look at the Tire Rack consumer surveys, the Dueler has terrible snow scores

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you are absolutely correct about tirerack.com. i can't explain it. i have noticed one thing with tirerack.com; people HATE the OE tires that came on their car. Why is that? Think of any common OE tire and look it up and 8-9 times out of 10 it will be very poorly rated. Some people will probably say it is because OEMs want the cheapest tire they can find. But that simply isn't true. I remember reading an article about the Pirelli Pzero Nero tires that came OE on my 2006 Mustang GT. It was an engineer with Ford and he talked about how much R&D went into the tire that so many on the mustang forums HATED. They solicited manufacturers to bid and provide tire samples and they choose the Pzero because it supposedly gave them what they wanted and yet according to many many owners it sucks. Other than being a hard riding tire I didn't think they were that bad but I only put a few thousand miles on them before getting new wheels/tires...

I just think it's odd and I'd love for someone with the resources to look into why so many owners hate the tires that come as OE. The aforementioned RS-A comes OE on my company car and it is rated horribly on tirerack.com last I checked; yet tirerack itself used it for a long time as a standard tire to compare other all-season performance tires in their tests. Also, I think they are a fine tire. Not the best but not nearly as bad as others say.

You also mentioned a very important point. 245 series is a pretty wide tire to have in the snow/ice. Narrow is definitely better. 20" wheels and Mazda suspension tuning is going to make any tire feel rough riding. Are the vast majority of H/L 400s being installed on 20" wheels? Are they being unfairly dinged due to unrealistic expectations about the ride quality of 20"/heavy wheels? Are they being rated before or after they are replaced so that some comparison can be made? Here is another thing, a great tire worn down to the wear bar is not going to ride as comfortably as an inferior tire that is brand new; unless that inferior new tire is extremely inferior. The rubber compound has broken down and been heat-cycled to death, there is no tread depth left to decrease impact harshness, the siping is long gone...

I put WAY more stock into tirerack's actual testing that they do and how they rate tires.

Here is another example. Everyone on bimmerforums rave about how the Conti DWS tires perform in snow. I have them on my wife's aforementioned E90 as well. Took them out on snow once and they were terrible! Didn't have the weight I needed in the back but ABS was kicking in like crazy. She wouldn't drive her car in the snow. She finally is trusting it now that she has been out on the winter tires a few times...

I will say tires should be chosen very carefully because they can make a huge difference in how a vehicle performs. TireRack ratings are a good place to start and should be considered but nothing beats actual scientific test data and the back to back testing that TireRack does with their cars.

S197GT said:

you are absolutely correct about tirerack.com. i can't explain it. i have noticed one thing with tirerack.com; people HATE the OE tires that came on their car. Why is that? Think of any common OE tire and look it up and 8-9 times out of 10 it will be very poorly rated. Some people will probably say it is because OEMs want the cheapest tire they can find. But that simply isn't true. I remember reading an article about the Pirelli Pzero Nero tires that came OE on my 2006 Mustang GT. It was an engineer with Ford and he talked about how much R&D went into the tire that so many on the mustang forums HATED. They solicited manufacturers to bid and provide tire samples and they choose the Pzero because it supposedly gave them what they wanted and yet according to many many owners it sucks. Other than being a hard riding tire I didn't think they were that bad but I only put a few thousand miles on them before getting new wheels/tires...

I just think it's odd and I'd love for someone with the resources to look into why so many owners hate the tires that come as OE. The aforementioned RS-A comes OE on my company car and it is rated horribly on tirerack.com last I checked; yet tirerack itself used it for a long time as a standard tire to compare other all-season performance tires in their tests. Also, I think they are a fine tire. Not the best but not nearly as bad as others say.

You also mentioned a very important point. 245 series is a pretty wide tire to have in the snow/ice. Narrow is definitely better. 20" wheels and Mazda suspension tuning is going to make any tire feel rough riding. Are the vast majority of H/L 400s being installed on 20" wheels? Are they being unfairly dinged due to unrealistic expectations about the ride quality of 20"/heavy wheels? Are they being rated before or after they are replaced so that some comparison can be made? Here is another thing, a great tire worn down to the wear bar is not going to ride as comfortably as an inferior tire that is brand new; unless that inferior new tire is extremely inferior. The rubber compound has broken down and been heat-cycled to death, there is no tread depth left to decrease impact harshness, the siping is long gone...

I put WAY more stock into tirerack's actual testing that they do and how they rate tires.

Here is another example. Everyone on bimmerforums rave about how the Conti DWS tires perform in snow. I have them on my wife's aforementioned E90 as well. Took them out on snow once and they were terrible! Didn't have the weight I needed in the back but ABS was kicking in like crazy. She wouldn't drive her car in the snow. She finally is trusting it now that she has been out on the winter tires a few times...

I will say tires should be chosen very carefully because they can make a huge difference in how a vehicle performs. TireRack ratings are a good place to start and should be considered but nothing beats actual scientific test data and the back to back testing that TireRack does with their cars.

Click to expand...

I have found that people do have a tendency to hate the OEM tires--but if you look on TireRack for every all season tire available for the CX-9 GT AWD, only 2 have decent snow driving ratings, regardless of how they are rated overall--the Ecopias and the Paradas.

And--the TireRack survey ratings aren't only for the car you are researching. The surveys are across all sizes and all applications.

Mazda's as a rule (all 4 of the ones I've had anways) tend to not do as well in the snow, and the tires they choose for the cars tend to do worse IMO. However as all around tires the OEM's tend to do well. That said in snow/slick conditions I've been unimpressed by the bridgestones, so far I've slid through 2 stop lights due to black ice conditions and couldn't stop at all. Both times I knew it was slippery and I was going about 20 mph, I began breaking nearly 1/2 to 3/4 of a block ahead if time and come heck or highwater I couldn't stop. ABS was kicking in the whole way too. Needles to say I was very lucky and the cars at the intersections the first time saw me trying to stop, second time luckily there were no cars.
In the snow it's been mixed, it's better then any mazda I've had before mind you, things that would hang up the proteges or the mx6 this thing just shrugs off. Though I've learned to not touch the traction control, without it the car just sits and spins. I can actually make it up my drive way without having to shovel it (I had to shovel even if I got a dusting with the protege's). It's pretty nice actually.
That being said I'll probably look at some winter tires next year. This is the if I have to go out in it car and I want to have it prepared as much as possible. It'll also make the alternate tires last a lot longer as all the spinning and sliding on the ice is not terribly good for them I think.