Awoke today to about 4 inches of wet, slippery snow on the back roads. First thing I did was give my daughter a quick snow driving lesson in her Civic EX coupe with Guardex's. First impression of the Guardex's is very positive, these tires are very, very confident in snow and ice. <p>After she left for school, it was my turn. Last year, the SP8000's with quattro were okay in light snow, but definitely squirrelly in really slick conditions. This year I switched to the 17 inch R-28 package for summer and 15 inch R-26's with Pirelli 210A's for winter. I've had the 210's on for about 2 weeks now and they're much better than the Guardex's in dry conditions. If you know the Denver area, I took a quick trip out to DIA on Saturday night to pick up my wife. I took the back roads on the north side of town, past the Rocky Mountain race track (used to be called 2nd Creek). There are a couple of high speed sweepers there and I took them at very high speed. Of course, the tires are not the equal of the P-7000's, but they're surprisingly good. I managed to provoke a little bit of drift and the tires were very progressive and surprisingly quiet.<p>At any rate, today I got to try them in very slick conditions and they were excellent. I can't believe how this car launches from a stop in conditions like this. And stopping was no problem at all. In fact, I had a hard time getting the ABS to cycle. The only time I felt any drift at all was entering a hard, 90 degree right hander too fast. The car started to understeer towards the median so I backed off the throttle slightly, turned in a bit more and then added a little more throttle. On my way without a problem. Hills where people were spinning wheels meant nothing to me. The only real frustration was hitting the gridlocked traffic that was encountered on pretty much every road into downtown Denver. This car is fantastic!<p>One last thing. I wanted to let Denver area folks know about my experience with the Discount Tire on 120th east of I-25. They gave us a great deal on Guardex's for two cars and mounted them on my wife's ES-300's alloy wheels without any damage. Because of our big purchase, they offered to switch my wheels for free and they did a great job. Hand wrenching the whole way, impact wrenches didn't get within 6 feet of my car. If you're nervous about your wheels, these guys seem to care. Just make sure you let them know how picky you are before they start.<p>Andy

I live in Aurora and commute to the Tech Center. I also have Pirelli 210A (on 16" R-28s). I was smokin' people from the stop lights this morning! Gotta love that quattro!<p>CraigB 8^)

I went with the Pirelli Ice Direzionales on 15" Passat take-offs, but based on your experience/ recommendation, I'll go to Discount (down the street from my workplace!) for the winter swap. BTW, I wanted to wait for the first snow (hoping for a relatively light one, just like we got) to see how the SP8000Es were, and I concur with you.<p>Of course, I'll share my initial "ice" compound experiences here in the next few weeks....<p>-- David F.<br>1.8TqMS<br>E30 325is

I'm assuming there is a pretty big difference between a Civic and an A4. I know the Guardex is softer than the Asymetrico, but any chance some of the handling differences were the responsibility of the car and not the tire?<p>TGB 1999 1.8T qMS

I wasn't really comparing the handling of the cars, just my early impressions of the tires. My daughter is a complete novice snow driver and I really like what the Guardexs have done for her car in the snow. They seem to be every bit as good as the Blizzaks or Graspics on snow and ice while not being quite as squishy on dry roads (as the Blizzaks).<p>The 210A's do not have the ice grip of the Guardexs, nor would I expect them to. I'd expect the Ice 210's to be close. In Denver, with all our sunny winter weather, I wanted to compromise a bit on the winter tire, especially since I have quattro. The 210A's are noticeably better than the Yokos in the dry and they should wear better also. If I lived in an area where ice and snow stayed around for months, I'd probably opt for the extra security of an ice tire. In Colorado, I think the 210A's or the Dunlop winter sports may be the perfect choice for quattro, at least for me. If there's a bad snow storm the night of a hockey game, I still need to get to the arena. When it's sunny, I still want to drive annoyingly fast. Time will tell, one storm is not quite enough for a firm opinion.<p>Andy