New Tires - set #3 for my car
 

Just visited the boys at my local Discount Tire store and installed Continental ContiExtremeContact tires in 245-40/18 size - same size as I had before when I had my Pirelli PZero Nero M+S. $650 all-in for the cost - mount, balance, etc.

Very pleased with the handling so far - they are still "scrubbing in" of course (getting the mold shine off of them) but really like the ride, the dry handling seems comparable to my Pirelli tires and they are so much quieter - those Pirelli's got really noisy in their last 5000 miles.

The OEM tires got switched to the Pirelli's at 4000 miles and these Pirelli's lasted 35,000 miles. I would strongly recommend them. Decent in the snow, great in the wet, great in the dry.

Stew

Glad to hear you're happy with them. My roommate got some Continentals put on his E36 M3 recently and they howl like a wolf, even under mundane cornering situations.

Stew, I had them on a Taurus SHO and they were super tires. HOWEVER, rotate the snot out of them for they are very suseptable to wearing funny and will judder or shimmy.
I will prolly get a set for my 8 when the time comes, but will rotate alot.

Do you know what the widest tires you can install on the stock 18 inchers?

245's i believe. anything more than that is pushing the safety barrier

Definitely 245 is the limit - these don't interfere with anything at all - but from what the installers said, the bigger issue is mounting that width on the width of the wheels - 245 is the limit for our wheel width - anything beyond that and it starts curving the tread patch as it is pulling the beads in too far for the width of the tire.

Regarding the other comments - yeah, I heard these can get noisy. Decision for me was mainly price. This car goes back to the leasing co. on 10/15 2008 - 10 months away, so wanted something that would be good in the snow for my last winter, and good handling for my last summer, all without breaking the bank. The Pirelli's have gone up anywhere from 20 to 40 dollars a tire since I bought them in October of 2004 - that's an extra $120-$160 that I didn't care to spend.