Noosa. Blue skies, sunshine, seagulls and sand. The recipe for some off-road beach fun. That’s what Bridgestone laid on for the A/T 002 media experience. The mission, then, was to look past the stunning beach driving on offer and focus on the tyres.

Bridgestone’s A/T 002 complements the tougher Dueler A/T 697, a highly-regarded all-terrain tyre with a construction that leans more toward work in rougher terrain.

The A/T 002 is more focussed toward on-road use with off-road fun and replaces a passenger vehicle version of the A/T 697.

Bridgestone says the more plush construction of the 002 mates with a true all-terrain tread design. It offers the comfort and tarmac grip of a good H/Ts so it works hard all week. Then at the weekend it’s well capable of tackling off-road fun.

This means it plugs the gap between a traditional all-terrain tyre (A/T) and a road-going highway tyre (H/T).

The tyre features a hexagonal block tread pattern and has been optimised for traction and braking across a range of surfaces, including sealed roads, gravel, sand, and light-to-medium mud applications. High silica content delivers excellent grip, especially in wet conditions.

Bridgestone says the A/T 002 is suited for an 80/20 split between highway driving and off-roading. Importantly, that does not drop the tyre into the traditional role of an 80/20 tyre, which these days is described as an H/T.

The A/T 002 presents a true all-terrain off-road capable look yet performs quietly and capably on tarmac.

National Sales Director Claudio Sodano says the look of a tyre is important to owners, but (of course) it’s important to look deeper and understand the character of the tyre and where it works best.

“If you look at the tyre and its construction and how it’s put together – its tread, its sidewall compound, the tread compound, to the belt and the body ply – each component we can make in a way that has a performance characteristic, but usually you’re trading something off,” he says.

“You can have an all-terrain light truck tyre and it will behave like this, but it will also do this – it’s about explaining to the consumer that are they trading something off. So the consumer looks at a tyre and thinks it looks really aggressive, and that’s great, but a tyre isn’t about its visual aesthetics – a tyre is a key functional piece of a vehicle.

“It’s about matching the tyre to the application and that’s what we’ve done with this product – not for everyone, but I reckon for a large proportion of SUV buyers.”

Down on the beach
Bridgestone was able to call on Isuzu’s media fleet for the event, and had laid on both the D-Max ute and MU-X SUV. That meant the group could try the tyre on everything from a tradie’s favourite D-Max LX on steel wheels all the way to a top-end family-friendly MU-X on 20-inch alloy wheels.

The full range of sizes were on offer across the test vehicle convoy, and driver swaps were the order of the day.

For the drive, journalists paired up and were allowed to choose the vehicle they wanted to try first. We opted for a silver MU-X fitted with 70-series 002s.

Heading out of Noosa on funky narrow urban roads A/T 002s were quiet and gripped well – as far as could be determined at urban road speeds.

That aggressive tread pattern was certainly not singing to us even with the windows down.

Turning onto the road leading to the beach the group aired down using a clever Maxtrax device that enables the user to match air pressures across an axle, or down one side of a vehicle. The Indeflate two-hose pressure unit costs around $290 in New Zealand, and is worth every cent.

On the MU-X we shared with Aussie journalist Rob Fraser, we dropped from pressures in the high 30s down to 24psi.
Hit 4-hi and off we went out across fine warm dry sand and onto the beach.

Interesting. Not a hint of scrabble or slip, the tyres just tracked straight and true. Emerging onto firmer wet sand, we headed north up the coast.

This leg was 32km on white sand ridged up by rip areas and we regularly steered between the hard sand at the waterline and the soft stuff up near the dunes.

The steering wheel provided clear feedback of what the tyres were doing.

One of the great things about Aussie is the ready access to 4WD adventure, and while the hard sand wasn’t challenging drivers, vehicles or tyres, the ease of just driving out and away into wild places was unlike anything that exists in New Zealand. All on the doorstep of cool resort beach towns like Noosa.

Without ever dropping pressures further the 002s handled the drive without fuss, even when we turned off at the end of the beach and drove across low ridge to our lunch stop beside an impossibly clean blue lagoon. Soft and choppy sand where the trail left the beach added drag to our progress but we never once felt at risk of bogging down.

We had switched by this point into an LS-spec D-Max ute, and stepped up to 18-inch tyres with a 65 percent aspect ratio. These were also slightly wider and thus retained plenty of sidewall depth for off-road work.

The Bridgestone Dueler A/T 002 is available in New Zealand in 14 sizes, with a further six to be added in 2025, which the company says will ensure fitment for “most dual cab utes, 4x4 and SUV models” on sale today.

For NZ4WD it’s now a waiting game. We’re looking forward to the chance to test these all-terrain tyres in New Zealand conditions, especially mud and clay, and perhaps some central plateau volcanic soils.

Meeting the market
It’s unlikely any tyre maker is ignoring the sales trends of the past couple of decades. Some, however, are doing better at addressing the trends.

SUVs accounted for 48 percent of global car sales in 2023, reaching a new record and further strengthening the defining automobile trend of the early 21st century.

Pick-ups and utes hold an equal grip on sales, with Ford’s F-150 (of course) the leader.

So it makes sense to create a tyre that specifically meets the needs of the vehicles we all want to drive.