Two markings on a tyre sidewall look as though they mean much the same thing, and one of them means almost nothing. M+S is a self declaration. A manufacturer applies it to a tread pattern because the pattern looks the part, and no test stands behind it. The three peak mountain snowflake has to be earned: the tyre is measured against a reference tyre for traction on snow and only wears the symbol if it passes. On a sidewall covered in markings, that little symbol is one of the few that somebody outside the factory has actually checked.
For most cars here the real argument has nothing to do with snow. It is about what the compound does when it gets cold. Summer rubber is formulated to work warm and it stiffens as the temperature falls, and below roughly seven degrees it stops keying into a wet surface the way it does in June. An all season compound stays pliable, so what you are buying is not snow performance, it is wet braking on a dark cold morning, which is a far more common thing to need. The trade is slightly quicker wear and usually a little more noise. Whether that is worth having depends on what the car actually does, and we will go through it honestly rather than push you at whatever is on the van.
The tread has probably been telling you for a while. Tell us the size off the sidewall and a time, and the van comes to the car with the tyre, the fitting gear and the balancer on board, to the drive in Clerkenwell Green or wherever it is parked. School run in Exmouth Market or 1am in St John Street, we answer the same. Christmas Day in Exmouth Market, any day in St John Street: the line is open. An EC1R address in Farringdon Road and one in the Amwell Street area are the same round.
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Journeys that start in Clerkenwell tend to be short ones, and a short journey never gets the tyres properly warm. In practice that means a set of summer tyres on a car used mainly around EC1R spends most of the winter working below the temperature it was designed for, on wet cobbles and greasy patched surfaces, at the first cold roundabout of the day. That is the case for an all season set, and it is a decision far better made calmly in advance than in the middle of a bad morning.
A car that never got warm on any journey it made had summer tyres and a driver who could not understand why the first roundabout of the morning always felt vague. The compound was doing exactly what it was designed to do at that temperature.
A set sold to a driver as winter capable carried the letters and not the snowflake, which means the pattern was declared rather than tested. It was not what they thought they had bought, and nobody had explained the difference.
The owner had nowhere to store a second set of wheels and no interest in swapping them twice a year. All season tyres exist for exactly that position, so that is what went on the car.
M+S is applied by the manufacturer with no test behind it. The three peak mountain snowflake is only permitted once the tyre has passed a measured snow traction test. A tyre can carry both, and if you want the marking on your sidewall to mean something, it is the snowflake that does.
Full winter tyres, for most people, no. Snow is rare and they wear quickly once the weather warms up. An all season tyre is the sensible middle for a car that lives here, because the benefit you actually collect is cold wet grip through the dark half of the year rather than anything to do with snow.
Not on the same axle, and we would not recommend it front to rear either. The two compounds behave differently in the cold and the wet, so mixing them means the two ends of the car stop agreeing with each other at precisely the moment you want them to agree.
No, and that is the point of them. They stay on all year, which suits anybody with nowhere to keep a second set of wheels. A dedicated winter tyre would come off in spring. An all season one simply carries on, wearing a little faster than a summer tyre would.
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