Edward'TLS

Having gone through the first and only snow fall in Vancouver, and also through numerous trips to the Whistler ski resort in various weather conditions (dry, wet, fresh snow, compact snow, icy patches), it is now time to do a full review of this newest hi-tech, hi-performance snow tire from Michelin.

I have had very good impression with the Pilot Alpin PA3 before on my last car (2G TL-S), in particular with the snow tire's handling performance. Back in the fall of 2011, I was planning to buy the PA3 again on my 4G AWD TL, except that Michelin decided to pull out my size (245/40/19) from the availability list in the very last minute.

This ended up working in my favor, because it inadvertently gave me the chance to try out the PA4, which I wouldn't have if I had bought the PA3 a year earlier.

In the dry, the PA4 is simply awesome for a snow tire in terms of handling performance. It handles more like a hi-performance all-season tire than a winter tire. When it's high adhesion limit is reached, the tire will start squealing, rather than break away suddenly with no warning audio feedback.

Even thought the PA4 is not as good as the Bridgestone Blizzak and the X-ice Xi2/Xi3 in heavy snow, it is still a capable snow tire in tackling light to moderate snow and icy conditions. When coupled with AWD, the pair can almost conquer all winter conditions as long as the vehicle ground clearance allows.

Even for the ski trips taken over the Christmas/NY period when about 50% of the road was covered by fresh and compact snow, I had almost overtaken every vehicles on the road traveling up and down the mountains.

Overall, the PA4 seems to be better than the PA3 in most ways, just as Michelin has advertized.

It is rather fascinating how much snow tire technology has improved over the years, in terms of dry handling performance that is rapidly approaching that achieved by summer tires.

But there is one minus point.

I understand that snow tires tend to be noisier than standard touring summer/all-season tires. But the PA4 seems to emit more road noise than usual, when traveling over certain road surface @100+ kph on the highways, especially the stretch of I5-South approaching Seattle.