If you’re in the market for all terrain tyres at the moment, the one problem you’ll have is the amount
of choice out there.
The number of products within that market is increasing, and the quality is heading the right
direction, too.
The choice is also influenced by what you need. Something that’ll get the job done, or something
more… flamboyant.
And by flamboyant, I mean more aggressive, with chunkiness and various other dimensions
increasing.
In the overall all terrain range right now, one of the most flamboyant tyres you can get, by this
definition, is the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss AT.
Aside from mud tyres, they’re one of the most aggressive, chunky tyres that I’ve had on my vehicles,
and in looking at them initially I was pretty worried that they would wear quickly, and develop a mud
tyre like howl within the first 20,000km, which wouldn’t be that much fun.
Chris used their bigger mud focused brother last year, and had a great time with them, but by my
measure, those ones still developed a pretty decent amount of noise by the time he was done with
his 10,000km long term test.
So my question was, how would the AT variants go?
If you look at the marketing that’s come out from Mickey Thompson around these tyres, they’re
pretty proud of them, even calling them their best AT tyres to date, which is a big claim. I mean, I
guess they wouldn’t call them anything else, would they!
There’s some pretty cool tech in the tyres though, so let me just work through some of the more
interesting bits and pieces, before we launch into the actual experience with the tyre.
One of the first things that you cop an eyeful of are the side biters. They’re massive. Like chunkier
than anything else we have in the warehouse. They certainly make the ute look serious, even when
just sitting around in the carpark – most other mall crawlers are envious!
This is contributed to by the aggressive shoulder lugs, which are part of the asymmetrical tread
pattern. The gaps in the shoulder lugs vary from a standard-all-terrain-width to close-to-mud-
terrain-width, and back again, as the tread block groups cycle around the tyre. You can see that in
the photo if you look closely at how the lugs vary around the tyre:
Looking at the tread pattern, you can see that the tyre is pretty heavily siped, too. That’s the little
lines cutting across the tread blocks. They’re the things that are going to help the tyre grip the road,
particularly in snowy and icy conditions, and that’s the reason why the tyre has a Three Peak
Mountain Snow Flake (3PMSF) Rating on most sizes. That’s good news if you’re in regions which
experience that sort of wintery weather, but perhaps also good news for the rest of us, as they
might contribute to better road holding year round.
Internally the tyres also feature the Mickey Thompson trademark “Powerply XD, which adds 50%
heavier cord to the angled third sidewall ply, and this theoretically makes the sidewalls tougher. This
is great for touring in spiky terrain, but I’m wondering how they’ll go for deflation in sandy territory,
as I do a bit of that fun stuff, as well as deflation for regular track work.
So, are these tyres that look awesome, and perform amazingly off road? Or are they for mall
crawling posers? Well, let’s delve into that!
The Experience
These tyres and I have had some excellently fun times together, and I must say, I’ve been incredibly
impressed by them!
In day to day use, I have absolutely no complaints. They hold the road well in the dry, showing none
of the understeer that I’ve experienced with a couple of other tyres from this category. During this
test I had the use of a brand new PX4 Ranger XLT for the day with whatever HTs they come stock
with on it (I shall not name and shame), and I was surprised at how much they understeered going
through dry roundabouts. I was pretty happy to get back into my bus, I can tell you.
In the rain I was able to go full attack around roundabouts and wet twisties without backing off at
all, and on a vehicle of this size, that’s quite the feat.
I actually feel I can’t understate their wet weather prowess enough. For a tyre that is as aggressive
as this, to out perform many other tyres in the wet on my vehicle, it’s pretty amazing.
Quite often on roundabouts I’ll notice with some other tyres that the tail will come out, or
understeer will kick in, but I had no such experiences with the BBAT, unless I was really pushing it.
These characteristics hold up in surprise ice, as well. I had an experience where I was shooting up
over the central highlands of Tasmania in the middle of winter, and while I’d been through some
patches of ice on south facing slopes already, I thought I was free and clear, so opened it up a little…
turns out there was some ice coming into a fast corner, and I literally kept it on the road with only
millimetres of blacktop to spare. I feel if I had been using a tyre with less siping, and no Three Peak
Mountain Snow Flake rating, then I would have binned it into the gutter and start walking.
Speaking of not walking, I have to mention how well these tyres handle the sand as well. I got to take
these treads to the sand dunes multiple times, and didn’t get stuck once, while also taking the
opportunity to pull a few other people out :)
At 16 PSI, which is what I usually roll with on all tyres initially on the dunes to get a feel for them, the
tyres felt like they bulged out and had a large enough tread face on the sand that flotation was
reached and I didn’t need to drop the pressures any further for regular sand driving. That’s great, as
with heavier carcass tyres, like MTs, you’ll quite often find that you need to lower the pressures
These tyres also tick the box on the noise side. While they’re not as quiet as some of their more
placid AT ilk, their tread is significantly more aggressive, and there’s definitely not significantly more
road noise. In fact, taking these off and putting on some 2 ply sidewall ATs for the next long term
test made me realise just how quiet the BBAT actually is.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re not quiet. But they’re pretty close, for what they are.
One thing I did notice was that at 10,000km they started to get a bit noisier. This was at the start of a
7500km road trip to Uluru from Tasmania, about 800km in, so I took it to an awesome tyre shop in
Adelaide I know, and they did a full alignment and rotation for me – thanks guys!
This kept the tyres quiet for the remainder of the trip, which was a blessing, as we did 83 hours in
the car over 20 days. Noisy tyres would have done my head in!
I also got to get them onto corrugated red dirt roads briefly in the Northern Territory. It was amazing
the difference before and after I remembered to lower the tyre pressures. Even with the decent
suspension in this ute, the ride was rough and the little aerial on the front was wagging all over the
place.
After dropping the pressure to 20psi all round, it was like driving on a race track… so much fun!!
Bumps schmumps.
I can comment on towing a little as well. We towed at 1500 pop up caravan for most of the trip with
no dramas. Didn’t even really notice it on the back. I’d be curious to hear feedback from folks with
fullsize pickups as to how they go with towing, though, so make sure you leave your feedback in a
review here on Tyre Review!
The Opinion
As you might have been able to tell so far, these tyres are pretty amazing.
And I guess that’s the caveat to all the froth about how amazing the tyres are. The initial purchase
price of all four is fairly eyewatering (at the time of writing, and I assume that’ll continue) in
comparison to some of their competitors.
That said, it’s a one off price for something you’ll be driving on for years, and the quality you’ll get
from them is next level. Is the difference really worth quibbling about, if you want to equip your car
with tyres that you can really thrash and more.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these tyres to anyone who wants to equip their bus with a
properly capable tyre. They’ll have more durability and traction on the road than almost any mud
tyre, while having significant capability off road, even approaching and surpassing mud tyres in most
circumstances. I say most, as they’ll never beat a proper mud tyre in actual mud, but how many of us
actually smash through the sloppy stuff as our main pursuit anyway?!
The investment here is actually a reasonable one from a treadwear perspective as well. Using my
ususal back-of-a-beer-coaster maths, I calculated that I should get about 80,000km out of the
Mickety Thompson Baja Boss AT tyres before they got to their minimum wear marks. For the
capabilities they exhibited during the 17,000km of testing, that’s remarkably good, and more than
most ATs I’ve tested recently.
The price of the tyres as tested is about $0.56 per 100km of estimated use, which is definitely
towards the more affordable end of the spectrum in comparison with the other AT tyres I’ve tested
over the years.
So is that the bombshell to end this review on, then? The Mickey Thompson Baja Boss AT, an
amazing tyre with a high initial price, but great long term value. Done deal.
The Ratings
Dry: 4.5
Wet: 4.5
Offroad: 4
Comfort: 3.5
Noise: 4.5
Treadwear: 4.5
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