In the world of motorsports, especially in off-road motorsports, there is one tire company that has been leading the ranks for years: BFGoodrich. Whether desert, stadium, or rock racing, the BFGoodrich name has been on the podium a lot, and with good reason. We recently spent some time in Baja, Mexico, and got to experience some of the BFGoodrich rubber first-hand, and what we headed home with was both a respect for the product and a list of stories a mile long.
BFGoodrich started making tires back in the early 1900s, and they were the tires of choice on the first on- and off-road vehicle, known as the Ford Model A. BFGoodrich got into racing around 1970. The first off-road race for BFGoodrich was in 1976 with the All-Terrain T/AKO tire in the Baja 1000. BFGoodrich is a tire company that takes the design and aesthetic of its products very seriously, but even more importantly, the performance. There are bigger tires on the market, and even some that are more aggressive, but none with as much off-road heritage and competition abuse as BFGoodrich.
But what does this have to do with your daily-driven truck and recreational four-wheeler? When a tire company takes the abuse of the Baja 1000, the destruction of professional rockcrawling competitions, and the demands of the general public and combines all that experience into rolling round products, you can see it is both listening to its customers and demanding innovation from itself.
With any product there is always room for improvement, and we, being picky for the sake of our readers, want to give BFGoodrich some directions for what we want from our tires. First, we want bigger sizes. Though many of us drive Jeeps, still more of us drive trucks and DOT-legal tires over 37 inches would be awesome for us. As for rims sizes, yes, the big blinging 20s and 22s are cool, but most of us are still looking at stock size rims from 15s, 16s, and 17s. Plus they are lighter, cheaper, and easier on components.
Also, we want a tire that's as sticky as your competition-compound rockcrawling Krawler tire, rides as quiet as your All-Terrain, lasts for more than 50,000 miles, can take abuse like your Baja T/A (but still flexes like your Mud-Terrain), and makes it in a 40 or 42 for us and a 44 for grandma's truck. If you have any other ideas for BFGoodrich or another tire manufacturer, e-mail them to fred.williams@primedia.com and we'll make sure to pass them on.