Our Golf GTD is now sporting a set of cold weather (also known as winter) tyres.

Volkswagen carried out the swap for us in early December and I immediately saw the benefit as temperatures dropped below seven degrees (the point at which cold weather tyres are more effective than standard tyres) that week and my home town experienced the first frosts of the winter.

Thanks to cold weather tyres I also made it home safely on a snowy Boxing Day. While other cars in front of me only just made it up a slippery hill, our Golf GTD handled it with ease, owing to the extra grip from the tyres.

However, it’s been a mild start to the New Year with temperatures of 8 to 10 degrees recently. At this point the argument for cold weather tyres becomes harder to make and I can understand the predicament that fleet operators face.

But for fleets working in colder parts of the country that need to have their vehicles on the road every day throughout the winter there is a clear case for fitting cold weather tyres.

Our Golf GTD also comes equipped with a ‘winter pack’, which includes heated front seats and heated windscreen washer jets for £360.