Low limits are what make light, tossable sports cars great.  The Dodge Challenger R/T, however, is not a light, tossable sports car.  On the contrary, it’s a big, heavy grand tourer with more visual brawn than balls.  And yet, with a Hemi V8 up front and moderately grippy tires at all four corners, its limits do extend beyond the magical threshold of what can be fun on the street within the letter of the law.  Logic says that lowering the Challenger’s limits would make it more enjoyable, and I have just the remedy for that as well as for the ever-present issue of cars being just too much for the street: snow tires. There’s a reason why people rave about hooning cars like the Miata and BR-Z/FR-S twins, and (spoiler alert!) it’s not because non-enthusiasts think they look cute.  No, it’s because from the factory they have low limits in their overall performance threshold, from cornering grip to acceleration.  This enables the car to feel fun, like you’re using every last bit of its potential and are working on the ragged edge, while still driving like a reasonably sane person.  Said limits can be many things, from one’s own driving abilities to the track you’re driving on, or even the law enforcement’s maximum allowed speed. Regardless, these limits are as much a restrictive factor to what you can do on the street safely and legally as they are what you and the car are capable of on a closed course. Like most other cars that are reasonably sporty or enthusiast-minded, the Challenger is among those that, while not a full-fledged sports coupe, does have some decent chops.  It’s not the quickest, fastest, or best handling, but translate its capabilities well to street driving, which is where most cars like this spend the majority of their time. You’re stuck with performance that well exceeds the speed limits that have remained largely unchanged since the previous generation of muscle machines were prowling the streets.  This in turn means that really pushing the car on a public road can be illegal or downright dangerous. Enter rubber designed for the winter months. Snow tires are knobbier than their all-season or summer counterparts, with deeper, more open lugs designed to keep the vehicle moving safely in inclement weather.  When you’re not driving on the cold white stuff, this creates questionable performance dynamics (which can be a good thing!).  It’s inherit in the snow tire’s characteristics that it eschews its fast-driving properties in favor of getting you safely home from the supermarket after you stock up on nine loaves of bread and eighteen gallons of milk just in time for the blizzard to begin (when, of course, you should have been stocking up on beer, whiskey, and pizza bites instead).  When it isn’t snowing, however, these tires can make a car fun in sketchy, hysterical ways.  And while there’s a very fine line separating sketchy-fun and sketchy-scary, allowing the driver to dabble with a car’s performance limits on the street is something highlighted by a set of snow tires deficiencies in the realm of handling any spirited driving whatsoever.  The combination of a smaller contact patch and a harder compound results in madness: acceleration worsens, braking suffers even more so, and handling becomes a test of finding the balance between unwelcomed understeer and throttle-induced, much-welcomed oversteer.  It’s like creating your own drama, but it works and it’s great fun. Let’s say you have a favorite corner that you usually take at 50 MPH.  On a standard performance tire this particular bend is mostly calm; you brake going in, lightly get on the gas, moderate throttle inputs through the apex, and slowly roll onto the accelerator until your back end is straight and the chassis and traction limitations allow you to go full-bore.  Knowing the car ate up the corner properly puts a smile on your face, but your heart rate isn’t anything extraordinary.  You’re happy, but mostly unexcited.  Attack the same corner at the same speed on snow tires and the wail of the rubber will be drowned out entirely by your laughs and screams as you and the car fight for every bit of the corner, battling physics in a match pitting your driving aptitude against a lower level of physics. Another amazing snow tire transformation turns your normal rear-drive car into a full-blown drift machine, especially in the rain.  Low lateral grip allows the breaking free of the rears with just the smallest bit of Scandinavian flick or with an otherwise insignificant stab of the throttle, allowing boring to instantly become exciting.  If sideways is fun, sideways at ultra-low speeds is hilarious, juvenile bliss.   Powerslides on snow rubbers are predictable, controllable, and mostly guilt free, due entirely to deep treads made of an extra-hard composition.  As a lover of going sideways, this is the true key to happiness, especially in the snow where the deeper, more aggressive outer lugs help you control your slides quite easily.  Oh, and being able to drive around safely when you need to also makes a winter-specific set worth the time and money. It’s come to the point that, for the street, the normal run-of-the-mill sporty enthusiast vehicles have become just a bit too much.  It’s the old slow-car-fast, fast-car-slow mantra in which going full-out is always more fun than being restricted by your surroundings; the difference here is that it’s limits-down, fun-up.  Like it or not, you cannot legally use a standard Mustang GT to its fullest potential on the streets, let alone a 911 Turbo.  People love cars like the Miata and Toyobaru twins because their performance is “accessible,” as in you can explore their relatively low limits without going totally bonkers-illegal.  But if your car does have limits that might not be street-friendly, a snow tire is the best way to start enjoying it to its fullest.   It drastically improved my Challenger’s fun factor, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t do the same elsewhere.  One nice, long slide should be enough to convince you…