[Columb]

Hello,



My G01 LCI has 19" wheels with summer Alenza tyres. As I need to drive through Germany in late November I'm thinking about changing them to all season tyres to stay on the right side of the law.


One would expect this to be a painless exercise however Google search reveales that there are only very few brands doing all season tyres in that size.
Strange as this is a 4x4 mini SUV so one would think that all season tyres would be almost default set-up.


What options do I have?
I'm thinking about driving from the UK up to Germany and get the tyres changed there (where should I go? Any friendly Germans here with garage recommendations?)
Changing wheels - but then 19 inch seems to be the smallest wheel for G01 as far as I can see. I wouldn't want to buy anything but BMW anyway.
Change tyres in France? Belgium? Holland?

As BMW is German and as Germany has most strict laws I would like to think that tyres will be just on the shelf but even looking at oponeo.de and couple other German sites I can't find many choices.


So what's going on? Is this just a temporary shortage of tyres in that size or are they just not produced? What should I do?


Thanks for all tips

Cheers

Chris

[Keefy]

Think someone posted something similar the other day on the forums, in regards to putting on all season tyres with 19” wheels, had something to do with if the car had the m-sport differential then BMW recommends against it, which then limits your options to going with a winter setup.

[Columb]

Thanks!

I have just a diesel and while it has some M stickers I think that they are just "M-go-faster-stickers" and nothing else.

So do people only drive on summer tyres? Or do they always change to winter set? Technically that blocks me from driving my car in Europe for 6 months. In the UK we don't use winter tyres at all and even all seasons are very uncommon. But I would expect that German car would be designed in a way that common all seasons tyres would fit as they are required by law across most countries...

Facepalm.

Thanks
Chris

Ps: I will reach out to BMW and ask them for advice.

[HighlandPete]

We've never really been into performance All-season tyres here in the UK. Different in the USA, where many BMW models are fitted with All-season as OE fitments. Therefore we don't have some of the best All-season tyres (Michelin and Conti) available here, that they use in the US.

Come to think about it, even winter tyres for BMW, were very limited until recent years here in the UK.

If you are running a square setup, (with same brand, spec' tyres on all four corners), there shouldn't be any issue for xDrive. It is with staggered setups where the caution is, for non-approved tyres.

[HighlandPete]

Originally Posted by Columb

In the UK we don't use winter tyres at all and even all seasons are very uncommon. But I would expect that German car would be designed in a way that common all seasons tyres would fit as they are required by law across most countries...

As a starting point, have you thought of using the Goodyear Vector 4Seasons Gen-3? Available in the UK. Worth reading the reviews.

[glennbk]

Originally Posted by Columb

Thanks!

I have just a diesel and while it has some M stickers I think that they are just "M-go-faster-stickers" and nothing else.

So do people only drive on summer tyres? Or do they always change to winter set? Technically that blocks me from driving my car in Europe for 6 months. In the UK we don't use winter tyres at all and even all seasons are very uncommon. But I would expect that German car would be designed in a way that common all seasons tyres would fit as they are required by law across most countries...

Facepalm.

Thanks
Chris

Ps: I will reach out to BMW and ask them for advice.

What tires do you use?

[Mike34532]

Originally Posted by HighlandPete

As a starting point, have you thought of using the Goodyear Vector 4Seasons Gen-3? Available in the UK. Worth reading the reviews.

I'm in the same situation. I contacted Goodyear and they warned me that the Vector 4seasons are not an OE spec, BMW star marked approved tyre. I would expect you might run into warranty issues if you fitted non-BMW approved tyres and had issues with the xdrive system? My understanding is that star marked tyres are designed around tighter manufacturing tolerances for this very reason.

It appears in the UK, and all the BMW marketing points to this, you have to go down the route of using dedicated star marked winter tyre, which looks to be the Continental Winter Contact TS860 S SSR.

Will be interesting what BMW UK say. I did contact them asking the same question, and all they responded was to say they forwarded my feedback/question onto the product team, and I never heard anything back.

I also contacted Pirelli and Michelin regarding OE spec all seasons given that they seem to exist in the US, but never heard anything back. I does seem that the 19" setup, the tyre size seems a bit more unusual, and therefore choices are more limited?