I have just completed a 24,000km trip on the Cooper A/T3 over some atrocious dirty roads, and there’s not a sign of wear or damage to them – they handled everything we dished up to them!

Our trip took us from home in Victoria to Point Augusta, up the middle to Daily Waters, across the Buchanan Highway (dirt) to Timber Creek and then into WA. We visited Newman, Marble Bar and went down the west coast via secondary roads to Geraldton, and then inland via the Wildflower and Wheatbelt Way to Kalgoorlie across the Nullarbor and Eyre Peninsula. We spent a lot of time on dirt roads: some good, some absolutely horrid. We also got caught out one night free camping: it rained and – you guessed it – we got bogged. Like their more aggressive brethren, the A/T3s performed admirably in the goop we were stuck in (they self-cleaned and gripped) and they got us out of there.

The A/T3 tyres performed exceptionally well at both highway pressures for towing a 16-foot off-road caravan (tyres at 40psi cold) and off-road on the many dirt roads we covered (tyres and caravan tyres at 26psi hot). I drive a 1996 Jeep Cherokee that is set up for touring and these days its all-up weight is 1,960kg. Out caravan weighs in at just under 2,000kg when fully loaded. I was extremely pleased with the total lack of road noise from them, as I am used to the road noise when running my previous tyres (the old Cooper S/Ts). We had absolutely no dramas with the tyres – they had done just on 10,000km when we left home and we added another 24K on the trip.

I’ve been running Cooper mud tyres for over 10 years, but after covering almost 40,000kms on the A/T3s I shall be sticking with them as on-road they are incredibly responsive and there is no hint that they will float in the wet. Thanks to Tony Whitehead at USA 4X4 for introducing me to them!