4x4 Tire Test - loose Rock - Photo 10691720

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Far harder to drive up than it looks, this slope of loose rock really surprised us when the wider, more conformable and more aggressive BFG ended up half a car length behind the Toyo, which was right behind the Dynapro RF10. Not exactly what we'd expected.

With two Discoverys and a Range Rover, Hankook set out to prove that its Dynapro ATm tire compares favorably with the Toyo Open Country A/T and the venerable BFG All-Terrain T/A, using trails around Big Bear, California, as testing grounds. In the foreground is the Toyo-equipped white Land Rover, followed by the "emergency-Rover" on Hankook tires, and then the green Land Rover with BFGs.

Don Alexander, our trail guide and organizer, had put together a good variety of trails and other obstacles that pushed both the tires and vehicles to their limits. Sometimes we made it over an obstacle, other times not. This happens to be a "not" moment, with former Four Wheeler editor Mark Williams piloting the Dynapros along a line that none of the tires could master.

Part of a short test loop, this hill had the Rovers stretching their flexy Old Man Emu suspensions to the limit. Right to the limit, meaning that the tires had their work cut out for them, and that locking the center diff made a difference. While we had several ties, this was one place where the BFGs came out ahead, and noticeably so.

All three sets of tires had been subjected to harsh testing for four months prior to this particular jaunt, which included slalom courses and other pavement punishment. Two of them (a BFG and a Hankook) already had nasty cuts in the bead area-and the rim damage to complement it-but here it's a Toyo that gets squeezed. Pretty darn flexible for a load-range E tire at 12.5 psi.

There were a few instances where it became obvious that the tires didn't have nearly as much to do with forward progress as did picking the correct line. Sometimes adjusting 1/2 inch to the side made all the difference, and while we didn't necessarily learn anything more about the tires in those places, it was fun four-wheeling.

An expensive digital gauge was used to set the pressure at exactly 12.5 psi on each tire. In reality, the pressure ended up being slightly lower (for all tires) as the drop was done after some pavement driving, which had warmed the tires up. On the other hand, there were times when we drove on pavement for a few miles at

All three tires had a sharp shoulder edge, which helps with lateral grip on dirt. But so does contact pressure, and perhaps that's why the narrower Hankook and Toyo tires slipped less on this 30-something-degree sidehill.

While there were quite a few surprising results in this test, the one that perhaps puzzled us the most didn't become apparent until later when gathering the data for this story, looking up the prices at a tire store that sells all three. Expect to pay about $190 for a BFG, $10 less for a Toyo, and another $10 less for a Hankook. Yep, the premium imports can be less expensive.

Far harder to drive up than it looks, this slope of loose rock really surprised us when the wider, more conformable and more aggressive BFG ended up half a car length behind the Toyo, which was right behind the Dynapro RF10. Not exactly what we'd expected.