Dunlop’s new mutant is aiming to carve out a new segment in the market as a hybrid all-road tyre, and with fitments for everything from adventurers to tourers, it covers a lot of machines!
Based around but not to be confused with their original Sportmax Mutant supermoto tyre, this eye-catching tyre boasts good all-weather performance characteristics and mileage making it a solid option for touring.
Earlier this year the team at Fast Bikes Magazine headed out on a tour of the popular NC500 on a range of the latest machines to evaluate their performance.
After being somewhat skeptical of the Mutant give its appearance, the guys had this to say in their November 2020 issue:
“So how did they feel, we hear you ask? Well, the most surprising thing for us was how quickly they warmed up and how well they behaved from the get-go when we were really pushing on; armed with a KTM 1290 SuperDuke GT, BMW S1000XR and a Kawasaki Ninja 1000SX, we did manage to get a fair lick on, and the Mutants obliged at every turn. This is because of their Dynamic Front Formula that Dunlop have gifted ’em, which essentially mean that the Mutants offer the sort of sporty handling and stability you’d expect from a much racier type of tyre, even when riding two-up and carrying luggage… which was spot on for us as Boothy had taken everything but the kitchen sink for our five-day jaunt. Even so, the Mutants provided immense feedback no matter what sort of lean we were throwing their way, with the only movement coming from when we were taking the mickey, on some incredibly toasty roads… which wasn’t at all shabby, considering the tread pattern looks deeper than the Pacific Ocean.
Mind you, we were all pretty glad we had those grooves, as we were in Scotland after all. And yes, of course it absolutely poured down on us, on more than one occasion. Thankfully Dunlop have used their state-of-the-art compounds to give some serious wet weather performance, which worked a treat – especially when we descended on some fairly sketchy roads. They actually told us that the Mutant’s tread pattern has taken elements from proper wet racing rubber, supermoto and dirt track tyres to give the best possible amounts of grippy goodness, and after a fair few miles in sodden conditions, we can confirm that they work a tread in terms of feedback and grip.
Okay, we may have only done a shade over 1000 miles on the Mutants, but even so, they didn’t look battered at all, and to be honest, as a tool for an all-weather heavy mileage job, we couldn’t have picked better rubber for the trip. From jabbing the brakes hard on the way into ever tightening corners, to going for that big lean knee down through long-sweepers they performed with more prowess than we ever expected, and from incredibly chilly early starts to piss-wet pootling through the mountains, they kept us all upright without even a hint of a complaint, in all honesty, these tyres definitely wouldn’t be the first things I’d look at when it comes to sticking on a high performance machine, but after a week of thrashing the living daylights out of ’em, we were all both surprised and convinced.
If you want a long lasting rubber for serious mileage that will look after some fast road riding and perform wonders in the wet, then you wouldn’t go wrong with a set of Mutants…”
