Help! a winter tire size advice thread

[pantsless]

I'm going out of my mind because I still can't which tires to buy and temps are already in their 40sF, I need winter tires stat pronto now.

The car is a 324td wagon on stock springs. Almost exclusively highway driving and plus numerous trips into the mountains where the roads are in bad shape and frequently white.

First off, should I use my 14" (6.5x14 ET30) or 15" (7x15 ET24) BBS rims?

If I go with the 14" it's almost certain that I'll have to choose a 185/65 or 185/70 (probably the latter) tire due to the lack of decent tires in sizes like 195/65 or 195/60 as well as price.

If I go with the 15" I'm thinking of 185/65 or 195/60 as there are lots of tires to choose from. I'm not as concerned about speedo readings as safety and handling.

Obviously a narrower/taller tire is better for snow/mountains but I also have to factor in that a wider/smaller sidewall is better for highway driving.

Any advice, what would be the best compromise??

[Nsquared97]

I'm running 185/70/14 on my bottle caps, (6x14) worked great last year, and they get a ton of snow where I was living. Like you mentioned, narrower is better when it comes to snow, and 185 definitely isn't extremely narrow by any means. I never had any problems with them on 500 mile trips either.

[lambo]

I'm looking at running 175's on my e30 steelies (14x5.5)

[SmokeE30]

185 70 14 is what I am looking to run my car is pretty low so I can't go too big on the tires but that should be a good size for figment an they only cost 62 per tire so it's hard to go wrong.

[pantsless]

Thank you all for your advice, I decided on the 185/65r14s this time. Tires are Goodyear Ultra Grip 8.