I have an IS 250 F Sport AWD with all season tires and am looking to get a set of winter tires and wheels. I'm in the Chicagoland area so there's a fair deal of ice and snow.

From some of the research I've done (and recommendations from tirerack), it looks like the Blizzaks WS80 are the way to go. I have 18" OEMs but going with 17" for the winter set.

I'm stuck on the wheels though. Anyone have any recommendations? The list on tirerack has a range of offsets and it looks like the IS250 front have a 45mm offset and the rear have a 55mm offset (based on http://my.is/forums/f95/oem-wheel-sp...ackage-382622/). I don't see any 55mm offset options on tirerack for the winter tires so I'm wondering what others have done.

 

Call tire rack. Their customer service is awesome and they will get you set up with some ideas!

 

I went with enkei pf01 17x8 and Dunlop winter sport 4d performance winter tires. Rims look great on the car. Haven't driven in foul weather yet

 

Thanks for the responses, Jeremy and evident.

Good idea, Jeremy. Called them up and ended up going with the Sport Edition P2 (http://www.tirerack.com/wheels/Wheel...utoModClar=AWD). Sales person said the rear tires with the higher offset are done for performance reasons and to help with understeer but if I don't drive the car hard, I won't notice.

For the winter tires, he said any of the ones recommended would work and to go with the cheapest one that I liked the look of. So that was easy. Well, except for the total price