New Tire Buying Guide: Everything You Need to Know

Buying new tires can be a daunting experience. You face a bewildering array of brands, sizes and tire types to choose from, so it's easy to be confused. But don't worry: this guide will provide you with the essential facts you need to in order to make the right tire choice for your vehicle at the price you want to pay.To get more news about summer car tires, you can visit gofortunetire.com official website.

Already know about tires and just want our top picks? Our favorites in each category are listed below. Further down, you'll find more information about all-season, summer, and winter tires plus our top alternative picks in each category.

Is our top pick unavailable in the size you need? Looking for a fast, easy way to sort through the dozens of alternatives? Then go to Tire Rack's Tire Decision Guide. The company says it'll have a list of appropriate alternative choices for you in two minutes or less.

The vast majority of vehicles today come with all-season tires, which are designed to provide acceptable all-around capability throughout the year and in all weather conditions. That means a reasonable ride and respectable handling, quiet running, good wet-weather grip, and some capability in snow. Given their all-season designation, most car owners leave them on in winter and expect that their tires will deliver all the traction they need on snowy, icy roads. But most all-season tires are marginal in snow; dedicated winter tires, also known as snow tires, provide far better traction when the snow falls.

There are now two main sub-categories of all-season tires: high-performance all-seasons and grand touring all-seasons. High-performance all-season tires provide sharper handling than "standard" all-season tires. They grip the road more confidently and feel more sporty to drive—usually at the expense of some winter-weather traction. These tires are intended for sportier cars and more-aggressive drivers. Grand touring all-season tires have the lower-profile look of high-performance all-season tires but ride better at the price of some handling ability.
Recently, a subset of grand touring all-season tires has emerged that we call “all-weather” tires. These tires feature snow traction that almost comparable to that of pure winter tires while offering similar performance in other areas as conventional all-season tires. They are designated by a snowflake-within-a-mountain symbol on the tire's sidewall.

This term is a misnomer, as this type of tire should rightly be called "three-season" rubber. Summer tires are designed specifically to deliver dry- and wet-weather traction in moderate or warm weather. They sharpen steering response, increase cornering traction by an order of magnitude, and stop your vehicle in much less distance. But they do so at a cost: most summer tires only work well at temperatures of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and above. As outside temps fall toward freezing, the tires can feel skittish and behave inconsistently; they lose a large portion of their grip to the point that they act like they are on a wet or even icy road. More than one driver of a powerful car, unaware of the temperature sensitivity of its summer tires, has lost control and crashed on a cold day.

As with all-season tires, summer rubber comes in several varieties. Tire Rack divides these tires into three main groups by escalating capability: ultra-high performance on the bottom rung, followed max performance and extreme performance. Summer tires come on cars such as Porsches, Corvettes, Mercedes-AMGs, and Mustangs.

Called "snow tires" in the past, winter tires are designed to provide maximum traction in snow and in slippery winter conditions—and the traction they provide in those situations is not matched by any other category of tire. Even an all-wheel-drive vehicle on all-season tires cannot match the stopping or turning capability of a similar two-wheel drive vehicle fitted with four winter tires, a point we have proven in our own winter-tire testing.

Winter tires are designed to work well in the cold-weather months, but they don't handle or wear as well as all-season or summer tires once the weather warms up. They should be considered as a second set of tires for your vehicle if you live where snow flies annually. We fit all of our long-term test vehicles with winter tires and they've proven their worth many times over.