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Our trusty 2007 Mini Cooper, securely shod with Nokian WRG-4 tires for our first snowfall. Photo by John Gilbert.

We’ve been watching the latest-arriving winter in my lifetime threaten its first snowfalls, and we’re already in January. Bu the added time — and a weird coincidence — has assured us that our Mini Cooper is securely shod with a set of new Nokia WRG-4 tires, which will make us safe and confident no matter what might fall from the sky or accumulate on our roadways.  

There was a time when we would not have considered any tires other than Nokia’s, which are made in Finland out of strictly disciplined compound ingredients that assured their tread would remain flexible no matter how cold those tires get. And in Finland, up north of the Arctic Circle, it can get plenty cold.   What has happened over the last 25 years is that finally, other competing companies have caught on and started to make competitive tires, after years and decades of making pretty good substitutes without the road-sticking characteristics of Nokias.  

I have had several trusted tire dealers in the Twin Cities, when I lived down there, but my most trusted is Jeff Hofslund, who owns and operates Foreign Affairs, a service outlet that also sells tires  and is located on Seventh Avenue East and Ninth Street on the Duluth hillside, Jeff advised us, for the last three years, that the well-worn Nokia’s on our Mini were still operating effectively, so we could hold off on investing in new ones.  

My wife, Joan, wasn’t so sure and said she felt that the front-wheel-drive Mini was less stable than it used to be. However, with well over 40,000 miles, those Nokias gave us no choice when Joan was driving the car to work a couple weeks ago, She called and said she’d had a flat tire and we’d need to call AAA because it was undriveable. Triple-A came through, and I have to say the severe impact that blew our left rear tire, and put a nasty crease in the edge of its steel wheel, is a testimony to how nasty Duluth’s potholes can be.  

As she continued to drive in on East Superior Street from the freeway, Joan noticed a horrible sound that she feared might be from the engine, but she pulled over soon enough and saw the damage done. The left rear had only a skeletal remnant of what used to be a tire.  

We talked it over with Jeff only briefly and made our decision. He no longer stores dozens of tires, because he can obtain any tire on the market from a Twin Cities warehouse within 24 hours, and the Nokian WRG-4 all-season tires in our Mini’s size listed at $103 apiece. We got four.  

As our trusty family back-up car, our 2007 Mini Cooper has served us well, like a loyal soldier always reporting for duty and never missing a beat. It has also served as a rolling test bed for a lot of experiments and tests I’ve thought up for it.  

One place where my wife, Joan, and I have never compromised is with the tires we put on our cars. New cars come with new tires, but I’ve long suspected that car-makers don’t seem to care about what tires they install and send on the road on their new cars. I care, and always point out that your tires are your only true contact with the road surfaces, whether smooth, gravel, wet or ice-covered.  

Nokian for years has specified tread compound characteristics that allow the tread to flex and reopen after it bites a mouthful of snow, so it can spit it clean and get a new star ton the next bite. As its all-season tires have evolved, Nokian also has improved the tread wear so that the all-season tires can last 50,000 miles or more.  

We have about 97,000 miles on our Mini now, and back when we bought it from a late-model used car outfit in Twin Cities suburban Golden Valley in 2009.  The model year — 2007 — I knew was the first year that BMW owned Mini and built the engines themselves in Europe. When you put new tires on a car like that, it feels like a whole new steering system has been installed.  

As such a diminutive car, it is interesting that Mini builds a small, squares vehicle that will house four adults comfortably, with front bucket seats and two rear seats, which can fold down to expand the storage considerably.  

The high-revving engine has plenty of pep and can accelerate with many more prominent vehicles, One of the reasons I’m so impressed with Jeff Hofslund is that he is a walking encyclopedia about cars he works on, and the tires he puts on them. For about three decades now, he’s tried to talk me into buying a set of Nokia’s best serious winter tires — the Hakkapeliitta. It is the one that ranks as the best in the world, with superior traction and wear capabilities that can outlive the competition. The tread compound and design works the best, too.  

However, even though I live where I have to scale these tall cliff-like avenues in Duluth, Minnesota, i have found that the Nokian all-season tires work so amazingly well that I can get along with them on my cars and add the convenience of leaving them mounted on the car year-round. The expense of the Hakkapeliittas is such that you know they will wear faster on bare pavement and you wouldn’t want to waste that precious tread by running them when there isn’t heavy snow.  

Every customer I’ve advised to buy Nokias has come away satisfied. Twenty years ago, a woman called me and asked my opinion on what might make her Accord handle better in snow. I told her about the all-season Nokians, and she bought a set of them. Living in a rural area, her husband drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which she would beg to drive on wintry days because the Accord slipped around so much. In those days, Honda put Michelin tires on its Accords because they wear a long time, but in this case, the woman installed Nokians to replace them and called me back. She said that the Accord with Nokians had such good traction that she now pe=referred to drive it to the Jeep.  

By test driving many new vehicles, I have learned that in recent years some other upper-end tires work almost as well as the Nokians. I mentioned that to Jeff Hofslund, and he agreed. He said that the newest Michelin X-Ice, the Pirelli Scorpion, The Continental X-Contact, and the General Alta-Max worked almost as well, and he is also impressed that those companies have finally caught up to Nokian’s once-wider lead in winter traction.  

The Upper Midwest, especially Northern Minnesota, is unique in having convincing reason to install the best winter tires. Same with the Upper Peninsula. Other areas have less-critical reason, and may not even need such tires. But right here in Duluth, Foreign Affairs has been and remains the No. 1 seller of Nokian tires in the U.S.  

I also am impressed with those companies, but when it comes to plunking down the cash for a needed new set of tires, I’m sticking with Nokians. And someday, I promised Jeff, I would make the investment and try his favorite Hakkapeliittas.