Mickey Thompson Baja MTZ P3 and Tuff A.T. T12 Wheels
Back in May, Mickey Thompson (MT) released new sizes in their infamous Baja ATZ P3 line. 35” and 37” tires to fit a 22” wheel. I had to know, how would that look on a Jeep cruising the urban landscape, and would it perform well enough for a moderate trail ride when you needed to escape the rat race?
The tire is M+S rated so you can drive it all year. Our tested tires are LT325/50R22 (35X13.00R22) wrapped around a set of Tuff all-terrain 22x10 T12’s in satin black with milled accents.
The Baja ATZ P3 radial tire is designed as a hybrid of mud and all terrain, with the characteristics of both in the materials, tread and sidewall. Large tread blocks offer a solid bite into rocks and sand while also easily flinging out mud to grapple with the next chunk of trail. The A-shaped ‘Sidebiters’ in the sidewall shoulder grab the dirt, sand, mud and rock when your tire is in a rut while providing extra sidewall protection at the same time.
The outside voids are designed with stone ejectors. You will get rocks lodged in the voids but just keep driving, as the tires will rid themselves of these offending trail souvenirs.
The proprietary T4 composition includes a high amount of silica for excellent tread wear, and in conjunction with the siping, gives you good performance on wet roads. It’s built with their race proven PowerPly 3-ply sidewall construction and an extra wide footprint.
Our test vehicle is a 2015 Wrangler JKU with a 3” Teraflex (TF) lift, TF front and rear bumpers and rock sliders.
On the Street
With the windows down you can hear that the rubber on road is louder than the stock tires, and probably every decent all-terrain tire we’ve ever tested. But this is a Jeep. Roll up the windows, and whether you are driving with no top, soft top, or hard top, the ambient noise in the vehicle at every speed over 60 kph drowns out any noise the tire might make.
The relatively low profile provides confident aggressive cornering without sidewall roll. With an usually wet summer for BC, we had plenty of opportunity to test drive the ATZ P3 on wet tarmac, and the results were good – good braking and grip through the corners.
Off-Road
We aired down to 20 psi for the off-road test drive. Enough to soften up the tires without exposing our beloved 22” Tuff wheels to damage (no luck there).
For the next two hours we traveled our favourite trails through gravel, sand, rubble and smooth rock. How challenging was our test trail? On any trail scale of easy, moderate or difficult - it was difficult. I have to bring this up, as our original plan was to keep the trail difficulty moderate but ‘moderate’ was too easy. There was no loss of traction on any surface. What’s a wheeler to do? Go for the gold.
We finally had to use 4 low and high to maintain traction and disconnect the front swaybar links to keep the tires on the ground. The tires performed flawlessly. I suspect that 35” Baja ATZ P3’s aired down to single digits on a 16” rim will climb trees.
If you want an aggressive off-road tire on your daily driver, without the problems that accompany a mud terrain tire on the road, this is it. The Tuff wheels did take a hit and got a scrape. This tire size and wheel combo isn’t intended to be used on the type of trails we tested. But it’s good to know they can be.