My girlfriend has a R56 2013 Mini One D with the standard 175/65/15 tyre size on it. I managed to get her to change from having 4 different Chinese brand tyres on it to a complete set of Bridgestone Turanza T005 some time ago. With an alignment the car drives much, much better.
She has just started a new job that comes with a 45 minute cross country commute on minor roads. Despite being in the south of England, to give her confidence in potentially bad winter weather on untreated roads do you reckon its worth getting another set of wheels with winter tyres?
I have been doing this for almost 10 years now - the nice thing about the Mini is that the tyres are very cheap as are second sets of wheels.
For her first Mini, a 2012 Cooper, I bought a set of standard 15 inch wheels, fitted 4 Goodyear Ultragrip winter tyres on it and put them on the car every winter. When we sold the car I sold the wheels for basically what we paid for them, so the only expense was the actual tyres which were about £45 each. But it also meant the summer tyres on the 17 inch wheels the car came with lasted the entire time we had the car as we put half the wear on them, so I think overall it cost absolutely nothing extra to have this set up.
Did the same thing again with the new Mini when that arrived in early 2018 - it's still on the original factory summer tyres as a result of running on the winter tyres over winter. So again I think when I look back I'd imagine the overall cost was very low.
I don't think they've ever really been needed though - it rarely ever snows anyway - but at least it wasn't a waste of time *and* money, just time
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