Annoying tire decision. please help.

[attgig]

So, I bought my car about a year and 4 months ago from carmax. Everything's fine with the car, but about a week and 1/2 ago, I get a flat tire in a snow storm ~3 blocks from my house. I decide to drive the rest of the way because it's snowing, it's slushy and nasty out, I'm still in work clothes, and i'm only a few blocks away.

I go home, put the spare on, but since i'm off to vacation soon, and I don't really drive that much (i put ~7500 miles a year), i decide to wait.

Finally this past weekend, i take it to a tire shop to see if i can get the hole/nail patched. 2 hours of waiting later, they tell me that they don't know why or how the tire went flat so no patching, but all the other 3 tires look pretty new (like i said, i put maybe 10k miles since i bought the car), so i should try to get a matching tire with the other 3 since it's a AWD vehicle.

So... I start my hunt to find the same exact tire, to match (all wheel drive, new tires, i figure it's easier to do that).
of course, carmax puts the crapiest/obscure tires they could find: falken ze-329

First I call carmax's service dept (they're the bright folks who decided to slap these tires on there), and they're absolutely no help.

I call bunch of places, and i find out that falken makes this particular tire for NTB tire stores. i call ntb, to find out that this is a discontinued model, and i'd have to get it shipped in from florida to replace this one tire for 160 bucks and it would take ~2 weeks.

Now, I'm taking a little ski trip this weekend, so i'd love to have a spare tire for the trip instead of driving on a prayer...so...

what should I do?
my options:
1) order them via ntb, wait a week & 1/2.
pro- final cost ~$160.
con- weekend with no spare. driving already with mismatched tires.

2) replace all four tires and just have peace of mind to know that none of these other 3 tires are just going to go flat on me on a whim.
pro- no future worry with other 3 tires.
con- upfront cost of 600ish. i think. maybe a little more.

3) just get 1 or 2 new tires.
cheaper up front.
totally unmatch, or match only a pair.

TIA

[Napoleon54]

If your car has traction control then different tires will have absolutely no impact. The car will correct for any differences in traction (it doesn't matter if it is coming from the driving surfaces [ex. ice vs pavement] under the tires or from the tires themselves... all the car knows is that there's different traction and it'll compensate). It always amazes me that tire places don't understand this.

[renovation]

if it was me I buy a a set of 2 tires and but the new set on the drive wheels. but my cars all have black wall tires showing. now if you raised white letter tires or a special tire pattern more relative to truck tires. then that can be a pain an the butt!
i just looked at a dodge pickup yesterday in the parking lot were i was at. I did say to a friend what a costly tire those had to be. I haven't seen a tire like the ones that were on this truck .but the truck looked like a special order custom job. IT had a dealer plate on it so may of just been that. it was a 4 door with extra space behind the 2nd set of doors in the cab looked to me like there was a extra foot or two added to the cab.

[cruelpupet]

Id buy 2 new tires from costco and put them on the car, leaving the one odd good NTB tire as a spare.

[attgig]

so, i had called ntb back, and he got tired of my calls and just told me to bring it in.

I went, they checked out the tire and it was fine. the bead probably broke by hitting the curb or something. they added some bead sealer, reinflated, and everything looked good.

drove it home last night with no problems.