Winter tyres; the post-mortem begins

I’ve written before about the move towards winter tyres this year – most recently on this blog on 25 November – which it seems has caught the industry on the hop. A report from respected buying guide What Car? has found that stocks are running low. Following complaints from readers, the magazine sent reporters out posing as private buyers and discovered that finding winter tyres for the two most popular cars in the country, the Ford Focus and the BMW 3-Series, was much harder than expected. It’s an understandable situation; the weather so far this winter has been unexpectedly bad, and that’s resulted in calls for drivers to swap to cold-weather tyres – by journalists like me and the big motoring organisations – has been unexpectedly intense. It works as an excuse for this year, but it won’t wash again. The tyre industry has got 12 months to sort itself out and get prepared. Why? Because all the people who have bought winter tyres now will be telling their friends about how good they are at improving grip, and demand will grow exponentionally. If you’ve still not been converted, visit www.whywintertyres.co.uk