Nitto Neo Gen tyres.

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With a really quick search I see people in forums talking about it earlier than 2009. Perhaps the compound was refreshed. My point in mentioning these dates is I'm a bit skeptical that the Neo Gen is competitive with modern offerings.

Ancient as it is, it can still equal, or outhandle all of the other 400+ tread wear UHP all seasons in the warm, dry, weather.

NOT so much in the wet (any temp), much worse than the cream of the crop/'gold standards' of the current UHP all seasons in the cold wet, and not even in the same category in light snow capabilities.

The tread blocks are very large for an "all season" tire. Is it really more of a lower performance summer tire?

It gets its all season rating from tread compound and large voids (and possibly the pattern of the voids). If you think about F1 inter and wet tires (tyres?) they have big tread blocks and no siping, yet they are quite efficient wet tires. The Neo-Gen follows that philosophy with the addition of some siping which is not cut straight through the tread block, but rather interlocks through the block's depth.

It has no real claim of snow performance. And it's turned out that newer, more expensive tires have better wet performance.

But if you live someplace that doesn't have real winter but it gets cool enough that summer-only tires get sketchy, these are a reasonable choice for a year round tire. It's kind of more like what performance tires were like 50 years ago. You could drive Pirelli P7s in any temperature without worry about tread compound cracking and getting like glass, even though they weren't any good in snow.

Yes, the voids are the only thing which earned it an M&S rating, and just barely.

Until I went to buy them, and surprisingly found them listed under the all season category, I thought that they were a pure summer tire with a very rain capable tread pattern.

The stiff XL rated side wall, combined with that tread pattern and the softer compound rubber are what allows it to outhandle and out-turn in the more 'true' current, very 'tready/sipey' UHP all seasons, but make it much less capable in colder temp heavy rain, and mild winter conditions.

I live in high elevation, cold snowy (usually) winter weather, when I bought mine I had no intention of taking it out in bad weather, only drove in the rain once, never in snow, on salted roads, etc...I had super sticky tires for track days and these for the rest of the time. I also had at the time a new 4x4 dually, should be called 6x6, and an AWD 4runner so no need to drive the FiST in bad weather.

Acually during a tuning run there was a thin layer of snow on the ground where I turned around, went through it pretty well, better than expected, did have a Quaffe diff though.