We tend to chronically overbuy, as a function of overestimating our needs. A lot of people are uneasy about buying an EV with a 500-kilometre range, despite seldom ever covering that in a week, let alone all at once. We’ll split hairs over whether a truck can tow 10,000 or 11,000 pounds, despite only ever having towed a small boat once. There’s a hardly group of people more prone to overbuying than the truck crowd, and I’m willing to bet more than 90 per cent of the rigs rolling around on BFGoodrich’s flagship KO2 — or their newest KO3 — all-terrain tire would be better served by the BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A.
But I’m not trying to cast stones here. When BFGoodrich reached out to see if we’d like to evaluate any tires this season, I didn’t blink before asking for a set of new KO3s for my old Range Rover. It’s a cool truck, KO3s are the de-facto cool truck tire, and I wanted to look cool. Unfortunately for me, a cool guy already reviewed those very same tires for us, so I was offered a set of BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/As instead. In reality, made a lot more sense, and I’m quite happy with them.
Off-road looks, on-road manners
It made more sense because my truck, like most Range Rovers, does not leave the road often. It’s a comfy commuter, road -ripper, and errand-runner first. It would be silly to make it worse at those things for a fringe use case that my truck probably won’t see. However, part of the appeal of the truck is that it can perform admirably in those fringe use cases. The appeal of a lot of trucks — like mine, an older Land Cruiser, and more — is that it can back up its swagger with real capability. The Trail Terrain T/A not only facilitates that duality, it lends credibility to the perception that your truck can indeed do anything.
Driving impressions
I had BFGoodrich’s much milder Advantage T/A Sport LT previously on my Range Rover. If I didn’t drive them back-to-back on the same day, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the very, very slight uptick in ride harshness and road noise. Instead, I have a far tougher tire that, just importantly, looks far tougher. Its aggressive tread pattern extends onto the sidewall to provide more bite into loose surfaces, and also helps bolster the tire’s visual gravitas. It looks like it belongs.
More than looking, tough, the Trail Terrain is tough. It’s designed to be chip- and tear-resistant, so it’ll tolerate being thrown through gravel without being torn up. The tread pattern is carefully designed to not pick up said gravel and carry it home with you, either. It’s exceptionally effective at biting into tricky terrain and displacing water. BFGoodrich says tread design and rubber compound ensures good traction at cooler temperatures and a decent ability to cling to ice and snow. As such, it’s three-peak mountain-snowflake-rated for winter conditions, though we haven’t played with the Trail Terrains in such conditions just yet.
They handle well on road and off, and give me the peace of mind that I can go anywhere I want, all season long. The BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A’s interlocking tread and 3D siping are both full depth, and as such should be able to perform well in any conditions for a long time. So much so that BFGoodrich offers a 100,000 kilometer warranty on them.
Final thoughts
As with all things in car design, everything is a compromise of some capacity. More power means more fuel use, sportier handling means stiffer ride quality, and so on; it’s all in deciding where you want your compromise to fall. Full fledged all-terrain tires give up a lot in order to excel in order to excel in extreme conditions; super heavy duty, 10-ply sidewalls mean your tire will ride hard, and mega-macho tread patterns can be ridiculously loud, too.
This is great if you’re regularly pushing your rig to its extremes in far-out fringe scenario, but let’s face it, that’s probably not what you’re doing. In giving up that nth-degree of extremity, the BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A means you don’t really have to give up the on-road manners and capability that will actually matter and make a difference every day, while keeping the majority of the off-road capability — not to mention the more important impression of off-road capability — in tact.
