*All-season tyres*
While all-season tyres may be an option if you live in a relatively flat environment with hardly any snow, one must bare in mind that the road-holding in both seasons is not as good as season-specific tyres. In addition, the all-season tyres will not get me the last 100m home where I have about a 28% incline with only 5cm of snow. It also barely gets the car up a 200m 13% incline with 5cm snow. They also have a higher noise level than summer tyres, so you have that as well during O2O (Ostern bis Oktober).
The all-season tyres also get wobbly at high ambient temperatures when doing high speeds, so look at the max tyre speed as well.
Suggestion: When your winter tyres do not qualify to be driven during another winter, you can use them for the summer and just buy another winter set next winter.
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*Rims*
For the winter tyres, buy a standard set of cheap steel rims – those black things that you need to put a hubcap on if you want it to look pretty. Normal aluminium rims get heavily corroded by the salt and will most likely need to be re-sealed after about 6-8 years. This is not expensive, they simply use paint to paint the inside of the rim. Alternatively, you could buy tyres that take a tube.
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*Storage/Changing tyres*
Your local Werkstatt will most likely have a service to do this. They will store your tyres (about €17/change cycle) and might even send you a letter informing you that you need new tyres for the coming season and give you 2 alternative choices that they get a bulk discount on (ours does this).
If you choose to only keep 1 set of rims, they will most likely charge you extra to change tyres because then it’s more work for them as it’s no longer just a case of taking 4 wheels off and putting 4 wheels on.
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