Mitas Tyres

[Big Willy]

Originally Posted by motorcycletyres AU

Hi everyone, just letting you all know that the 150/70B18 and 90/90B21 E-10 have landed in Melbourne. RRP is $259 and $189 respectively, available Australia-wide through your local friendly bike shop.

I'd like to address a couple of points if I may. Firstly, I can't add much to Mitas' excellent technical posts regarding compounds, but I would like to highlight the fact that the E-10 is a very different beast to the E-07/8/9 on a much deeper level than that. Beneath tread patterns and rubber recipes is the fundamental construction of the tyre, and that is where the E-10 is light years ahead. It's belted-bias carcass, at least theoretically, is far better suited for transmitting large amounts of power to a wide range of surfaces. It offers, again theoretically, the sidewall strength and all-round toughness of a crossply, but with the greater flexion, traction and stability of a radial tyre.

I say 'theoretically' because it is for you guys to decide whether these characteristics actually translate to the real world. We love the Dakars, and all the stories we hear of groups of people riding thousands of outback kilometres without a single puncture between them. But we also know that if we were riding powerful bikes, heavily loaded, at high speeds, over variable terrain, then we'd probably want to be on E-10s. There is a lot more to a tyre than 'kilometres-per-dollar of wear'.

The other point I'd like to make is regarding distribution. We've worked really hard to make Mitas tyres more accessible through regular retail channels. As many of you know, we used to sell directly. The problem was that we simply couldn't offer all the advice and service that was being asked of us, and half of the tyres were being taken to dealers for fitting anyway. More recently we have taken to referring all sales directly to dealers and subsidising freight so that every bike shop pays the same low cost. We now have over 700 dealers, in every state and territory across Australia. It is no secret that some are more helpful/friendly/greedy than others, but if your regular bloke won't get you Mitas tyres at a fair deal drop us a line and we'll line you up with someone who will. If you just want cheap internet rubber there are other brands for that.

I think basically we all want a tyre that gives good value for money.

Value basically means grip and wear for a good price, which was where Mitas excelled before, if you didn't include wet weather handling .