This past weekend I got a couple of days to poke, prod, and drive the new Goodyear MT/R.  It is a revolutionary tread design that is a pretty radical departure from what is now the norm.   

     Going into it I was skeptical about the assymetric and seemingly directional tread design.  Did it mean that we'd need to have a left and a right side tire?

Even after talking to the engineers and people inside Goodyear that were on the development team I was kind of skeptical.  With all the info they gave us and showed us it was easy to see how it would clean out mud better than the old MT/R, how the sidewalls would hold the Jeep up on the rock better, and the addition of Kevlar throughout the tire and the line would add to its puncture resistance (by like 150% over the old tire).

My issue was still the directional look of the tire, which was explained away as the angle that the outer tread block comes off the tread kind of negates the angle of the tread block in the tread pattern.  It wasn't until I stuck a JK shod with them in a mud pit and purposely clogged the tires up, and then cleared em out with a bit of wheelspeed that I was convinced.  Both sides cleared out at the same time, regardless of the "direction" I thought it should have been going.

After a day out messing around with the new tires, I'm sold.  I can't wait to get a set on my XJ (which has the "old" MT/R) on it for a head to head comparison on the same Jeep.