That looks to me like textbook impact damage. That "cut" would coincide with the rubber being forcefully against the rim. The raised spot would be air in between the layers of the tire. The damage inside the tire corresponding to the part of the tire that applied pressure the visible "cut" on the outside when it all folded up. And/or damage to the cords themselves. Usually they don't go when the damage happens, but weeks or months, or if you don't drive a bunch, don't take long trips, it "could" be literally years later. Especially if the rims are dedicated. Somebody swapping that over would (hopefully) notice that before turning it loose, especially being on the "top" side when mounting/dismounting.. With a properly inflated tire it takes a "pretty noticeable event". If the tire were underinflated, just a plain old every day pothole can do that depending on the depth, angle, etc. The low profile tires don't help the situation in either case.
These are dedicated snow tire rims - cheapest alloys I could find. At the time, I couldn't get steel rims in the right size. As far as I know they weren't underinflated, because there's TPMS on the rims, so at least they weren't grossly deflated. This is my wife's car. She brought them into the dealer to be swapped with the summers. The tires were stored in our garden shed for the summer. The dealer supposedly helped us by putting the tires in bags, which I find to be incredibly bad. It makes the tires hard to carry, and apparently it makes it hard to see if the tires are damaged. The dealer refused to install these - which I agree is correct.
As for low profile, these are 50 series, which aren't that low. All new cars seem to have lower profiles than this. I think I chose a size that had higher profile than stock for these snows.
Since this is my wife's car, I don't know what she may have hit or not. Usually she tells me if something went awry, but maybe she didn't think
that particular hit was that bad. I do know she does ask me to check her tires, especially if the idiot pressure light goes off.
Haven't seen tire damage like this before. I've seen bubbles (on the parts of the tire facing towards the car centerline) but not cuts like this. Punctures, slices, and whatever, but not this.
I did end up sending the picture to Tirerack, since I bought the tires there. Wanted their opinion on root cause. Figured they've seen a few tires in their time. Me, I only worked in my grandfather's tire business for a summer.
