Mickey Thompson Deegan 38 Tyres: product test

COMING from a racing background, I was pretty excited to fit a set of the new Mickey Thompson Deegan 38s – named after legendary MotoX, RallyX and off-road racing champion Brian Deegan – to my two-door Series 1 Land Rover Discovery.

Rolling a set of Deegans on my old Disco was never going to turn it into a racing truck, but I needed something less aggressive than the mud terrains I was replacing. The new rubber needed to be quieter for long-distance tarmac driving, and they needed to grip in the dirt when in low range.

Mickey Thompson’s all-terrain Deegan 38 seemed to be the right fit, with its tough, high-tensile two-ply body cord sidewalls for increased durability, deep, open-void tread pattern, and angled shoulder scallops with a two-pitched side-biter pattern for off-road traction.

The tall, square-edged (with minimal sidewall) construction gives the Deegans a race-ready and modern style, and they’d be a pretty good look on something like a modern Ranger, Mazda BT-50 or Toyota Hilux – they perked up my old bus.

The first thing I noticed on-road was how quiet and smooth these tyres are – my old Disco is pretty loose, but it never felt so smooth or tracked so straight. I was also surprised by how well they cornered in the wet. The Disco is a pre-swaybar model, so I was able to put that to good test and never lost traction, even under brakes.

Off-road, the deep tread holds well and, even at road pressure, I was able to get the tyres to bag due to the square edges. Even though I’m running the standard LT225/75 R16 size, it feels like I’m running a much wider tyre due to the tread running edge to edge.

And, with a silica-reinforced compound, tread durability seems great – even after a couple of runs up the challenging Rocky Track in Toolangi, Victoria, there were no cuts or chips.

The square edges and the minimal-but-offset sidewall tread-blocks were able to extract me from clay, muddy ruts on my most recent fishing trip, and with a little squirt of the throttle I was able to clear the mud from the deep tread. I’m looking forward to putting the Deegans to the test on some upcoming longer trips.

The silica-reinforced tread compound should see good longevity, but I’m just happy to have a smoother, quieter and easier-to-handle old truck.

AVAILABLE FROM: mickeythompsontires.com.au
RRP: N/A
WE SAY: Worthy of the Deegan name.