Tire Review: Nitto Motivo 365 All-Weather Tires

Life is all about compromises. Just ask anyone with kids. Technology can make some compromises a little easier to manage, but when choosing tires, it’s always about compromise. Want maximum grip for acceleration, braking, and cornering? A soft, sticky-compound summer tire will deliver that in dry, warm conditions but turn into hockey pucks in cold, wet weather. Conversely, a proper winter tire compromises performance in dry, warm conditions, not to mention its longevity when temperatures rise.

Some believe a tire marketed as “all-season” allows them to avoid changing their tires seasonally, but in reality, these tires tend to underperform across most tire metrics, regardless of weather, especially in winter. With that in mind, I approached the opportunity to test a set of Nitto’s “all-weather” Motivo 365 tires with a healthy dose of skepticism.

What’s the Difference Between All-Season and All-Weather Tires?

All-season tires differ from all-weather tires in that the latter earn a 3-Peak Mountain Snowflake (3PMSF) rating, signifying they have met a minimum performance threshold in light snow acceleration testing that an all-season tire does not.

There are a surprising number of all-weather tires available, with most aimed at truck and SUV buyers seeking something with an all-terrain tread that can be used year-round. Increasingly, passenger car tires are earning the same 3PMSF rating but are constructed with sufficient durability and dry traction to handle use even in warmer temperatures. Few of these options are designed for higher-performance machines with low-profile, wide-aspect tires.

This is where the Motivo 365 comes into play. Nitto has designed the Motivo 365 to earn its 3PMSF rating, while also maintaining stability at speed and handling characteristics not usually associated with a winter-rated tire. Nitto claims to achieve this through a combination of the tire's composition and construction. Notably, the sidewall compound is designed to be stiffer than the softer rubber typically found on winter tires, which helps the tire’s responsiveness to steering inputs.

The tread design is separated hemispherically, with the inside portion featuring offset grooves and aggressive sipes to grip on snow and ice, while the outer portion grips in wet and dry conditions, where the most pressure is applied to the tire during cornering.

Like the Colonel’s secret recipe of herbs and spices, a tire’s compound is usually a well-guarded secret, but what Nitto has shared about the Motivo is that it utilizes a high level of silica dispersed in such a way that the tire remains pliable in cold temperatures, while not simply melting away when things warm up, resulting in a longer life span. The slightly harder compound than typical winter tires also means that beyond the handling benefits, the Motivo 365 also reduces rolling resistance, minimizing the impact on fuel consumption that winter tires often have. 

Nitto provided a set of Motivo 365s in size 245/40R/18 for my car, a 2024 Subaru WRX. In fairness, the WRX can make short work of poor weather conditions even with mediocre tires, but the Nittos were mounted early enough during an unseasonably mild autumn to ensure some warm-weather driving before winter conditions set in. Now, after more than two months and a few thousand kilometres, I’ve had a chance to see how they manage a whole gamut of weather and road conditions.

In the Dry

Switching from the very aggressive Bridgestone Potenza S007 ultra-high-performance tires that came with the car, the biggest adjustment in warm weather driving with the Nittos was the diminished responsiveness to steering inputs. My summer rubber is a size up – fitted to 19-inch wheels – so a loss of input reaction is expected due to the Nitto’s taller sidewall alone, but given their supposed all-weather capability, the Motivos did not feel as squishy as typical winter tires normally do on warm, dry pavement.

Certainly, the dry grip of all-weather tires will not match the way a dedicated summer tire clings to the tarmac, but when temperatures dip below 7 degrees Celsius, those summer tires get very hard, and lose grip in a hurry. Meanwhile, the Motivos seemed to grip as well when it was zero degrees as they did when it was +15C.

In the Wet

What was less surprising was how well the Motivo 365s managed wet weather. With a tread pattern featuring deeper grooves and more channelling to evacuate water than the summer tires, the Nittos are less prone to hydroplaning than the summer rubber, which is beneficial whether turning, braking, or cruising down the highway.

An early winter storm in Southern Ontario brought some particularly challenging drive conditions during a trip between Ottawa and Hamilton. During a six-hour stint behind the wheel, the road conditions rapidly deteriorated from dry, to light snow, to deep slush by the time I reached Toronto. While extra caution was exercised, I also made it a point to test the limits of grip when it was safe to do so. In all of it, but most notably in the slush, the Motivos gripped far better than anticipated, even when doing some simulated panic-stop testing. Braking is where all-season and summer tires really falter in the winter mess, but the Nittos provided enough grip to deliver strong, controlled stops in the cold and wet.

On Ice

The limitations of the Motivo 365s became most apparent during the first really cold snap of the season when a modest amount of snow had become compacted into ice on the rural roads near my home. The Subaru’s all-wheel-drive system can work wonders with whatever grip a tire can provide to get itself up to speed, but turning and stopping are where that system offers no benefit.

Sure enough, throwing the WRX into a wide, 90-degree turn on the packed snow at an imprudent speed resulted in the Nittos giving up grip quickly and the car sliding under considerable understeer. 

Trying a few more turns at various speeds, with some aggressive braking thrown in for measure, the Motivo 365s proved to offer more grip on the icy surface than one could expect from summer or most all-season tires, but they definitely don’t have the same control on ice as dedicated winter tires would do.

Who Should Consider Motivo 365s?

Even Nitto’s spokesperson confirmed that these tires are not meant to replace full-on winter tires for those who need them, but to offer another solution for the right scenarios. One such scenario would be for snowbirds who make a regular trip from Canada to the warmer southern states. Those folks need a tire that can get them through potential stormy winter weather on the drive to and from their sunny retreat, but want a tire that won’t melt away in the heat once they’re there. Plus, they’re quiet compared to many winter tires, and they seem to have little-to-no effect on fuel consumption, which all helps make the Motivo 365 a solid choice for this scenario.

The past decade has shown Southern Ontario winters to become milder, with far less snow than there used to be generations ago. Here, as well as places like the lower B.C. mainland, and much of Vancouver Island, these tires can be used as a suitable choice all-year round for many crossover SUVs and sedans.

Final Thoughts

In my own scenario, an all-weather tire like the Motivo 365 will never replace my summer tires for the spirited driving I enjoy during the warmer months. But, knowing that my summer tires are not only very quick to lose grip in the cold (not to mention, wear out quickly and are costly to replace), the Nittos are a great way to enjoy my performance car during the dry, warm days of the shoulder seasons, while also having a sufficiently competent tire for a Southern Ontario winter, too. If I had a crossover SUV that wasn’t so performance-oriented, I’d happily run Motivo 365s as a year-round solution, negating the need to store and re-mount an extra set of wheels and tires every other season.

The Nitto Motivo 365 is an impressive way to minimize the compromises one needs to make when choosing a tire required to serve an impossible number of needs.