Hi Again
OP here.
So boiling it all down I believe its best for me to stay away from winter (40F and below) tires in my application.
My new plan is to run an All Season 3PMSF tire like the Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady
Tire Rack currently has $200 off a set of 4.
If you must get an all-weather tire, get Nokian, Michelin or BF Goodrich.
The Goodyear Weather Ready is a solid tire. I run them as my 3 season tire on the VW. We run the Nokian WGR3 on her Subie & the other VW as the 3-season tire and I think it is slightly (might even be in my head) better than the Goodyear. The other option is the Toyo Celcius, it is very good too. We have that on the other Subie. But the Goodyear WeatherReady & the Toyo Celcius handle the dry roads better than the Nokian WGR3.
Once we get heavy snow we move everything over to the Nokian Hakka 9 Studded.