Winter tires for the Saabaru
 

I don't care for dry weather handling, I want this thing to be awesome on the nasty stuff, so I am not going for high-performance winter tires.

Stock all-season tires are 205/55 R16

For winter I want to go with 15" wheels/tires.

Dunlops are ~$18 cheaper per tire.

What should I get?

I'm putting Hankook Icebears on my sister's WRX this week.

Blizzaks.

At one point in time, the MZ-01's (which I had) were the softest, most squirmy snow tires you could buy. And with that meant that they were also one of the best snow tires you could buy. They no longer make this model, but you could find out what replaced it. I believe it's something in the LM series.

I didn't see the Poll. My vote, from that list, is for the WS-50's, and in the narrower size. As you probably know, narrower is better in the snow.

Never heard of those. Are they similar to the WS-50's? Cost?

They're cheap. I'm also quite happy with the DS-2s on the M3.

Yup, I had WS-50's in the old Benz in the stock 185/65 R15 size. They were awesome on ice & snow, but as expected, the sidewalls seemed made of jello on dry warm days.

It just seems like the dunlops are almost as good and cheaper ($62 instead of $80).

Yes. I think you should have tires on the Saaburu during the winter.

Why not? Even in the dead of winter, you're driving on dry pavement most of the time.

Driving on dry highway at 90 mph on squishy snow tires scares me.

Driving on dry highway at 90 mph should scare you. Scare you into slowing down.

I voted for the Dunlop just b/c I have experience with Dunlop snow tires and they were awesome. I got Dunlop b/c Tire Rack was out of Blizzaks. I am sure both will be fine for your purpose.