My wife and I bought a brand new 2008 Highlander Sport. The car is absolutely beautiful and comfortable. We moved to the Chicago area, after living in NH for several years so driving in the snow is nothing new to us.

I must agree with the Bill from Mass. The tires are terrible and unsafe. After owning the car for only 2 weeks, we got an inch of snow. We could not drive up our drive way. The tires started to spin, we lost momentum, and we slid backwards all the back to the street. The next attempt to get up, the car slid off of the driveway and was stuck in the snow covered grass. Typical snow driving skills would have you turn the wheels, and/or rock back and forth to get unstuck, but Toyota's built in protection cuts the power to the transmission when the wheels start to spin (a function you cannot shut off on the 2008 Highlander Sport). We took it back to the dealer and they told us that it is common with new cars. There is a film on the tires that needs to wear off. Reluctantly, we agreed to disagree, and fortunately, the rest of the year was nearly snowless.

However, this past fall, was not the same. We can also attest to the fish tailing. When turning from a side street on to a busier street, we ended up facing on coming traffic as we slid uncontrollably into their lane of traffic. I know what you are thinking...it was not poor driving, it was not ice, it was 1-2 inches of snow. My Sbaru and/or my work's Xterra experience none of these problems.

Also I can attest to Bill's complaints about the availability of tires. There simply were not any besides the stock tires, the Blizzak snow tires (which were out of stock), or if my memory serves me correctly, Open Country tires, which were an alternate stock tire that also received very poor reviews. The 19" rims make it difficult. My options were to buy new wheels and tires (go up or down a size) or wait for the winter tires to become available and pay twice a year to have them installed/removed.

Quite honestly, I was not interested in doing either one. We sold our Highlander. We did not feel safe driving it and the dealer could offer us not great alternatives without spending another $3k. Yes, we took a huge loss. Which I am still disappointed with since we bought a Toyota for safety and retaining value.

I am not ranting against Toyota like the rest of the world. We replaced our 2008 Highlander with a slightly used 2007 Highlander. It is the older body style. Certainly not as plush as the newer one. It lacked the 3rd row seats. It has less towing capacity. But it is tried and true and has been around for 6+ years.

I have not experienced another problem with my 2007 Toyota Highlander.

This is my wife's first new car in 10 years. We went with the 4x4 version since we live in the Northeast and travel to Maine a lot in winter to visit family. We bought the car in March of 2008, and only experienced two instances of driving in snow, one was in New Hampshire on a ski weekend. We never really thought about the problem then since this vehicle was so new and is so heavy.

However, this winter, we have had a LOT of snow in Massachusetts, and this car has been called on to get us to work, to church, shopping, and all other aspects of suburban living. The problem I write about here today is the stupid Bridgestone Dueler 400 tires that came with this car. They SUCK in snow. Simply turning from a side street onto another road causes the tail to slide like this is a rear-drive truck with summer tires, which is odd since this is a full-time 4 wheel drive SUV. When a slide happens, there is lots of noise and drama when the stability control system kicks in to electronically compensate for these tires' complete lack of ability to handle cold weather conditions. I'm talking hard packed snow, loose snow, slush and even wet snow. There's no grip. Stepping on the gas to summons 270 horses also causes more stability control intervention as the power from the incredible motor simply overwhelms the grip these tires refuse to offer.

In hindsight, we now realize this problem existed from the get-go, not only now that it has 14,000 miles on it. We can look back to the driving when it was new and realize it was just as bad - we just didn't know better. And, all spring, summer and fall, when there was a heavy rain, or even a mediocre rain, this thing hydroplanes like an SOB when on the highway. That is something you can count on with these tires.

So, if you go to tirerack.com you can read customer reviews of this tires, as this is also standard equipment on the Mazda CX-9 4x4, another vehicle we had considered. There is complaint after complaint about this tire. The grave problem I am going to have is that our Toyota Highlander has 19" wheels, and this Bridgestone Dueler appears to be the only tire that will fit. What was Toyota thinking??? I'm sure they had a sweet deal with Bridgestone to come up with a cheap tire, but they didn't look forward to when customers will need to re-tire. I've looked around - there's NOTHING out there, except for a Blizzak or some other snow and ice tire - no thanks. Winter just isn't that long here. AAAHHHH!!!

Update from Feb 23, 2010: This is an update, mostly in response to one of the other complaints from a guy who bought narrower, 18" wheels as a solution to his problem, which I do not recommend for a 4,400 LB vehicle with a "Sport" moniker on it's flanks.

To move away from this nasty Bridgestone tire, what I really wanted to do was buy 20" rims and enjoy the benefits of having dozens of tires to chose from (The Yokohama Parada Spec X really appealed to me) but that was a very expensive proposition. If I'm going to spend extra money on rims for a "Sport" model, they had better be wider than OEM, not narrower. I also did not find a 20" rim which looked nicer than the slick stock 19s. So, my compromise was to buy a Hankook Ventus tire (shipped to and mounted at my local Sears Auto center) in the 255/55-19 size instead of the stock 245/55-19s. The one minor compromise, which my wife and I calculated using our GPS on a long trip, is that for every 100 driven odometer miles, you've actually travelled 102.9 "GPS" miles. 3% can actually be what is acceptable in variation from OEM odometer to actual clocked miles, so that's not at all a bad compromise. What we got in return is an AMAZING tire that handles very well in snow, goes right through "lane rain" at 75 MPH without drama, and holds a tighter line with this 4,400 LB beast when going around corners at speed. I can now take highway exits without any fear at 50 MPH. It's like night and day, and while the only positive attributes that the Bridgestone's had were "quiet" and "nice ride", these Hankooks run a tiny bit noisier and stiffer. Small price to pay for a HUGE improvement all around.

The stiffer ride, and slight uptick in noise come from the fact that the Hankook's have a V speed rating instead of the whimpy S rating for the Duellers. In addition, the Ventus' load index of 111 increase tire durability and sidewall stiffness, along with long range safety, over the OEM 103 load index. All of these are HUGE in my opinion, as we bought the Sport model for a reason - we love to DRIVE!!