Winter Tire Recommendations - Official BMW Recommendations

[JCL]

Originally Posted by mgruber

Some interesting choices. Since Canada gets pretty decent snow I can only assume these recommendations actually mean something.

Thanks for posting the pdf.

I wouldn't go so far as to call them official recommendations. They are offers. Not bad information, but there is nothing there that makes these choices better than equivalent tires from other tire manufacturers that didn't co-op the advertising budget.

[X5 Meister]

I'm not sure what you mean by "offers." The document looks pretty official to me and certainly far more so than a rep at tirerack or a local dealer who says "uhhhh whatever we have in stock is what we recommend, I think." According to BMW CA it is official.

You can put everything down to marketing and advertising dollars, but at some point BMW is responsible for their choices in terms of safety and performance. Otherwise why not put any tire on the cars, or better yet, any size tire. For one thing people would quickly say the cars handle like crap and they're not buying BMW anymore. At the least I think 50% of any decision by a company has to do with science and perhaps 50% to marketing.

[JCL]

Originally Posted by mgruber

I'm not sure what you mean by "offers." The document looks pretty official to me and certainly far more so than a rep at tirerack or a local dealer who says "uhhhh whatever we have in stock is what we recommend, I think." According to BMW CA it is official.

You can put everything down to marketing and advertising dollars, but at some point BMW is responsible for their choices in terms of safety and performance. Otherwise why not put any tire on the cars, or better yet, any size tire. For one thing people would quickly say the cars handle like crap and they're not buying BMW anymore. At the least I think 50% of any decision by a company has to do with science and perhaps 50% to marketing.

By "offers" I meant an offer to supply tires, ie a sales promotion. The document may look official, and I am pretty sure that the tires they are offering will fit, but I think that is as about as far as it goes. AFAIK BMW Canada does not have an engineering department, let alone a science lab. They don't design or manufacture cars, they distribute them to dealers.

I think the real motivation for the brochure was to remind BMW owners with all season tires that their X Drive vehicles would do even better with winter tires. Three representative tires were shown, from three major tire suppliers. I don't for a moment believe that each tire shown has been matched to the handling characteristics of each model. Rather, these are suitable, representative tires. All are the right size. All are approved by Transport Canada. All have suitable speed ratings and load ratings for the vehicles in question. That's about it. Tire Rack (as an example), or someone reading the owner's manual, could reach the same conclusion as to which tire to fit.