Personal Experience with 215/55/16 Blizzak WS80

[akirarex]

I've been using 215/55/16 Blizzak WS80 on a 2017 Civic Hatchback Sport in Northern Ohio and I just want to post my impressions of these tires. First off, I have always used snow tires in the winter, and they have always been Blizzaks. My previous car, a 1999 Civic Hatchback had Blizzaks and was a natural snow champion, I've used this car to pull people out of driveways and small ditches. This car never got stuck in snow, and never made me feel uncomfortable or unsure of it's chassis attitude. I was always able to do the speed limit or very close to it driving through the snow belt in NorthEast Ohio for anyone familiar with the area... it's where all the lake effect snow falls due to the Great Lakes.

Now, 215/55/16 Blizzak WS80 on a 2017 Civic Hatchback feels like garbage. The stock Sport tires were garbage in the snow, absolute understeer at more than like 10-15 degrees of steering input with only 1-2 inches of snow on the streets. (The stock Sport tires are 18" Continental 235mm width- I would call them unsafe for the areas that I drive through.). I put 16" wheels on with Blizzaks, and the tires do not spin now like the stock tire, but the chassis attitude is still garbage. It constantly loses the rear end and the front end gets lift. I personally think that 215 is still way too wide for a snow tire on this car. It's tread face is 7" across. I would have bought the 195/60/16 Blizzaks because the tread face on those are 5.5". I feel that the 7" width is too wide and you cannot cut through snow. So heads up for people that actually have to deal with deep snow, if you are thinking about getting snow tires, get something that is less than 7" of tread face. You want to have a smaller treadface to have more pounds per square inch on that treadface to cut through. You can feel the car lift and not cut through, I have gotten out of the car a few times to look at the tire tracks in the snow to confirm this. I have thoughts in the back of my head that maybe even the fluid filled control arm mounts are allowing the car to change toe angle a lot when it goes through these grip/loose traction/grip/loose traction cycles. It is hard to verify such a thing though.

Next time I will buy 195/60/16 Blizzaks.

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[BarracksSi]

Thanks for the heads up.

The most mileage I've put on my 215/55-16 Pirelli Sottozeros was on the highway where I couldn't afford to try any experimentation with handling limits.

I used to use 195-width snow tires on my EP3, and the FK7 isn't much heavier than the EP3 was. I'm still a little unsure whether 215s were the best choice (definitely better than the stock 235s as you say), but I think I can go narrower for my next set of tires.

 

[BigDog]

I've got 235/40/18 Blizzak's on my stock rims and the car exceeds my expectations for handling in the winter. Have driven on glare ice and through those 0 degree snowfalls where there's a really slick 1/4" coating of snow on the road and it's like driving through oil on glass... never had a problem or lost control in either situation. The worst snowfall so far was 3-4 inches and I didn't have any problems. Of course this is coming from driving a 2WD pickup with all seasons for the last 7 winters... so any front wheel drive vehicle has an automatic leg up.

 

[akirarex]

***UPDATE***

Yesterday I got stuck in my own driveway with snow that was maybe 2 inches above the front bumper. It was kind of powdery snow, and I was the first one to drive through it. My 1999 Civic basically plowed through snow this deep, often filling the front lower grille with snow.

 

[baldheadracing]

Compared to a '99, a CivicX has many extra pieces underneath to give a flat bottom, and that flat bottom is going to be a lot lower than a '99 as well. CivicX also has (I think) a better (better for handling) weight distribution which would put proportionally less weight on the front wheels. The car is going to build up a wedge of snow and then float on top of the snow - lower ground clearance is the price of aerodynamic efficiency.

I guess that you could remove the underbody aero pieces and gain usable snow clearance. The pieces are plastic so are not structural, and are mostly held on by clips, so it is straightforward, if a bit tedious, to take them off. (I temporarily removed a few of them recently when installing a new exhaust.)

 

[BarracksSi]

***UPDATE***

Yesterday I got stuck in my own driveway with snow that was maybe 2 inches above the front bumper. It was kind of powdery snow, and I was the first one to drive through it. My 1999 Civic basically plowed through snow this deep, often filling the front lower grille with snow.

Part of me wants to ask WTF didn't you shovel first. I admonished my nephew yesterday for not clearing the driveway at his home (it's just him and his mom there for now; his dad is overseas).

Do you have a guess what exactly happened, though? Did the tires just plain lose grip, or were you starting to high-center on snow under the rest of the car?

I've only gotten myself nearly stuck a couple times in my cars, and one of those times was an attempt to cross through a center turning lane that hadn't been plowed yet. The snow was shallow enough to let me drive in, but deep enough to start to lift the car and, high-centering it and taking weight off the wheels. It was an effort to get unstuck (and I never tried the same maneuver after that).

 

[akirarex]

I never had to shovel the driveway with my other Civic......which I drove for 8 years minimum..... so it's a new experience. My driveway is tended to more than the neighborhood roads are. But once out of the neighborhood, the highways are pretty usable. After I dug the car out, I saw 2 cars stuck in the streets a few blocks away as I made my way to the highway. It has been snowing almost constantly in this area. About 40-50 miles away they were in a state of emergency recently. Keeping up with the snow shoveling (aggressively) is not worth it....it's constant... gloves are always soaked with sweat. The neighbor's 8'ish year old Accord with all season tires made it out of their driveway...same conditions....same amount of snow in the drive. But like I said, my other Civic could go through this. If I think about it, the '99 had a lower front lip and a full race traction bar on the front of it that also pressed the snow down. The '99 also has even track width front and rear......Civic X has a wider rear track width than the front. The '99 weighs about 450 pounds less but it has about 63% weight ratio on the front where the Civic X is 61%.

I think the car pretty much was on top of the snow and then it pressed down when the speeds were very close to 2-3mph. It only took 15 seconds with a coal shovel to dig out the space in front and behind of the front tires and it could get free. It's like as soon as you slow down to a crawl it compacts down a lot and then you get stuck. The roads were worse than my driveway. I feel that on the streets the rear feels very loose to me and the front feels like it is trying to push through instead of cut into. I try to always keep the gas tank at least 1/3 full at minimum to have some weight. And I have been trying to see if I can get the rear end to be more planted with more gas back there....but I haven't seen a big difference in my few tests.

I really feel like the Civic X is just not a natural in the snow. And I like Blizzaks, I have had them on my previous Civics/CRX. But for whatever reasons, this combination of tire on this car is just not stable enough for my taste. Especially knowing how well previous Civics I've owned handled the snow. It doesn't feel like a homogeneous car, I always feel the front and rear are doing different things. I really want to try much narrower tires to see how much that changes the snow performance.

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