quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:
[quote]They are no bueno in temps below 40, so plan around that with second car or set of wheels. I don't mean just not great, I mean bad, and get exponentially worse once under 30.[/quote

^^^^^^ These are points to remember. Actually the wear curve increases as temps drop, and a polymer engineer I know told me that there is no sudden spike in the curve at 40 degrees, rather you might expect much faster wear at say 50 degrees than at 80, although you would have to do a lot of expensive testing to develop figures.

Personally I would not have run flats on any performance car, I don't know why for example, BMW puts them on. My CTS has the sport and handling package. The wheels are $$ pricey, so it did not seem a economic decision to buy an alternate set of wheels/tires for the cold days.

Letting the car set during colder (>40)days did not solve the problem. So I viewed the whole experience as an expensive learning experiment. I replaced them with Michelins which are plenty grippy, and probably better in the rain, if a bit noisy. It looks as though I will get about 20,000 out of them.

The Tire Rack guy I talked to said that it was a bad OEM decision to use Summer Max Tires on a daily driver, he says they are Track Day tires.