Taking control with BFGoodrich

There are shoes designed for mountain biking. There are shoes for wall climbing. Race drivers have special shoes of their own. There are running shoes, jetski boots, cross trainers. Fact is no self-respecting fitness buff would be caught dead wearing the wrong shoes in a certain sports activity. Logically, it’s also proper that the cars we drive receive the same treatment as far as footwear issues are concerned. And this is exactly what BFGoodrich Tires address: Making products designed for a specific purpose.

In the kick-ass Surfers Paradise in Gold Coast, Australia last week, BFGoodrich Tires launched two new passenger tires aimed at drivers belonging to the upper end of the performance scale. Called the g-Force Sport and the Sport T/A, these tires cater to enthusiasts who typically live the fast lane lifestyle, people who like to go fast and look good doing it and make no apologies about it. Now this regional launch is made even more exciting by incorporating it with BFGoodrich’s Got To Drive Challenge, an event made up of major doses of kick-ass driving activities.

Pitting participants composed of journalists from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the Australian homeboys and both Michelin and BFGoodrich execs with one another in a friendly competition of driving skills was certainly an interesting and effective way to highlight the features of each particular tire product. The fact that the activities – namely the g-Force Challenge, the Drag Challenge, the Motorkhana, and the Off-Road, the Skid and Wet Figure 8s Challenges – were held on either a racetrack or special driving courses also meant huge amounts of fun in the Australian sun. Actually there were drizzles half the time, making the whole shebang even more interesting and also proving that it rains even in paradise.

Tops of these interesting events was the g-Force Challenge. On a portion of the Ipswich Raceway, situated an hour from Gold Coast, driving events organizer Safe Drive Training designed a course that was ideal in testing and comparing the g-Force Sport tire with a competitor tire. The basic objective for participants was to record the fastest lap times around the course and to generate the highest Gs (force of gravity rating) possible while doing it. G-Tech g-force measuring devices were fitted on the cars, which were identical, bone-stock, front-drive V6-powered Mitsubishi Magnas, and were equipped with either the competitor tire or g-Force Sport tires.

Using the cars with the competitor tires first before switching over to the g-Force tires may raise some eyebrows, especially because the lap time and g-force rating results were markedly better in the BFGoodrich-equipped tires, as the case was for all the participants. After all, one had already learned the faster lines and braking points of the track by the time he switched over to the g-Force cars.

Now that may be a factor in the improved resulting figures, yes, but trust us, the tires really had a lot to do with it. In the g-Force cars, sudden "lane-change" maneuvers were clearly more controlled. The tail end of the car did not swing as much and body roll was slightly less, thanks to the tires’ stiffer sidewalls. In sweeping corners where speeds easily exceed the 100 kph mark, one can fling the car in the corner harder, in the process generating more Gs, and power out of it earlier, in turn creating quicker lap times. There were less tire squeal too, all indicating a higher degree of grip and control. Which meant more silly grins on participants’ faces also.

In the utterly confusing Motorkhana, the g-Force tire was subjected to another traction test, albeit one done in slower speeds. Here, a participant seemingly went around in circles in a course marked by poles, with certain portions of the course either wet or dry. The purpose of this test was to demonstrate the g-Force tire’s traction on both surfaces, and the most important of which was the transition when the car, a stock Toyota Camry, went from the dry to the wet parts. There should be very little discernible difference felt from the behind the steering wheel, as the g-Force tire must prove its grip in both wet and dry conditions. Especially since the car was traveling at moderate speeds only, which was a fair simulation of real-world, street driving situations. And it did display a negligible difference, indicating the g-Force tire’s impressive level of grip.

Meanwhile, two activities were lined up for the Sport T/A tire test: the Skid and the Slalom Challenges, both of which, and along with the rest of the other activities, were held at a vast place called Mount Cotton where the training courses and headquarters of the Safe Drive Training group were located. The Slalom Challenge was a fairly straightforward proposition. The objective was to simply traverse a course characterized by lots of drastic left and right turns, plus a couple of sweeping corners on both ends, in the least possible time. OK, it was actually a tricky, twisty proposition, because one needed to traverse the course quickly and precisely, as each cone marker hit added a second to one’s lap times. Having to generate the all-important Gs made the whole deal more difficult. Clearly, the Sport T/A’s level of traction and grip was put to the test, as this activity relied as much on the tires as on one’s driving aptitude.

The Skid Challenge handily and unanimously won the Best Fun Event Award among the participants. In this activity, everybody got to play out his most rabid rally driver fantasies. A tight, rectangular course was cut in the middle, making two square courses, one smaller than the other. The surface was flooded with a lethal combination of water and diesel fuel, deliberately making things extremely slippery. The exercise required one to drive either a rear-drive V8 Holden Commodore sedan or pickup, and to slide the damn thing around the course in the least amount of time. The catch was one had to look good doing so too, as points for style were half of the scoring. Needless to say, a lot scored bigtime in styling, some even showboating with a nifty 360 move (Was that you, Butch Gamboa?). As with the Slalom, this activity was designed to illustrate the control of the Sport T/A.

Though not as aggressively designed as the g-Force, the Sport T/A also displayed impressive characteristics. It did not match the performance of its g-Force sibling because, well, it was not built to be a g-Force clone. What the Sport T/A did was offer a fair compromise between "streetability" and some measure of racetrack performance. And it did so pretty competently too, lending a stock, for-daily-use car and an average driver above-average capabilities.

The other events weren’t any less fun also, and were excellent venues for BFGoodrich to showcase its for-specific-use products. In the Off-Road Challenge, the Mud Terrain T/A fitted Pajeros and Land Cruisers tackled the rough, slippery terrain, water crossings and vertical rock climbs like the sport-utes had legs. The vehicles simply crawled over everything, no problemo, thanks to the tires. In the Wet Figure 8s, where a couple of Hyundai Santa Fe SUVs were fitted with Macadam T/As, the "soft-roaders" displayed excellent composure in tackling the flooded course at speed – which couldn’t be said of some drivers, this writer included.

What is notable about BFGoodrich’s Got To Drive Challenge is the marketing philosophy inherent in the company’s Got What It Takes? campaign. In this effort, BFGoodrich is offering specifically designed products to consumers who have very specific needs. High-performance tires for sports car enthusiasts, street-performance ones for daily drivers, competition slicks for the really hard stuff, tires for both serious go-anywhere off-roaders as well as for mall moms soft-roaders – BFGoodrich has one for a particular customer. It even has the g-Force T/A Drag Radial, geared toward drag racing enthusiasts who use the same car for both the strip and the street. Consumers these days are in control of their lifestyle choices, and BFGoodrich recognizes this fact by offering products aimed at letting these people take control of their choices even more.