There’s a strange phenomenon in the world of motorcycling: poor quality original-fitment tyres.
When you buy a new motorcycle, the tyres it comes on as OEM might have the same make and model number as tyres you could buy from a motorcycle tyre retailer. They’ll have the same tread pattern. However, they’re nearly always a lower-quality specification.
This weird situation is a result of in-fighting between various different departments involved in the production of your new motorcycle. We’ll touch on the details a bit further down.
The even stranger thing is that in the world of OE motorcycle tyres, there are more losers than winners.
Why your new motorcycle comes with poor quality tyres
When a manufacturer builds a new motorcycle, they test various different tyres to figure out the ones that work best on the bike.
Best is subjective and this is where the problem lies. Best for the accounts department is whatever’s cheapest. Best for the tyre supplier might be the new line of tyres they want to push. Best for the R&D team might be the tyre that makes the bike work brilliantly on the road. Best for the bike manufacturer’s marketing department might be the tyre that makes their new Adventure bike look rugged.
Then there’s the issue of commercial agreements. Some motorcycle manufacturers have a deal with a motorcycle tyre manufacturer to only supply their bike on a tyre from that tyre manufacturer. That immediately rules out a large chunk of possible (good) tyres from other tyre brands – but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Why do the bike’s R&D team not test the tyres?
They do but politics is involved.
The motorcycle manufacturer’s Research & Development team will know what they are doing. They’ll be deeply involved in the bike and know the types of conditions it will be ridden in and what a rider wants the bike to be able to do. The R&D team will bang out thousands and thousands of miles riding the bike in the ways it shouldn’t be ridden to prove it can handle all the abuse that it’ll likely have to deal with.
Your ZX-10R will have probably been ridden across 100s of miles of rocky Japanese mountain passes with barely any oil in the engine and 150kg of lead strapped onto the rear subframe. Then ridden non-stop for 24-hours around a Japanese racetrack by ex-works riders. Then dismantled and every part checked to see that it’s within tolerance. Then re-built and run on a dyno to check it makes exactly the same power as the other 20 bikes they’ve abused.
During this process, the R&D team will try various different tyres and will choose the one that they feel best suits the bike for a majority of riders.
Depending on how much clout the R&D team have, their choice of tyre will be passed on to the production team. Sometimes the R&D team are just told the tyre the bike is going to be coming on and that’s that – but most of the time, they have a say.
The tyre manufacturer’s problem
When this tyre is specified, the motorcycle manufacturer then goes to the tyre manufacturer and says: “We’ll have 25,000 of these tyres please”.
Then the bean-counters step in and say “But we want them for £X per tyre.”
X is literally a fraction of what that same tyre would cost you if you bought it off the shelf.
I was once told by a tyre manufacturer that they supply an OEM tyre for around £10 when the proper version costs around £40.
That’s a £60 saving (for two tyres) per bike. Multiply that by 25,000 and you’ve got 1.5 million quid.
The tyre manufacturer wants to supply the tyre as OE because ultimately they will find a way to produce them and make a profit. They want to keep their association with that motorcycle manufacturer and keep their market share.
Original-fitment tyres are big business.
How the lower-spec OEM tyre is born
One of the issues with poor-quality OEM tyres is where the bike is manufactured. Most motorcycles are produced in the Far East. Motorcycle tyre manufacturers have plants in different locations around the world. Generally speaking, their specialist tyres (race tyres, premium products, etc.) are made in – or close to Europe – whereas their cheaper tyres and tyres for smaller bikes are produced in Asia (which makes sense because every man and his dog has a small-capacity motorcycle out there).
So when you ask your factory in Asia to knock out 25,000 tyres for big bikes there are a few issues.
Firstly, they often don’t have the compounds available to produce high-end rubber. Nor do they have the machinery (and expertise) to produce a top-end tyre. Top-end tyres usually involve multi-layer construction, knitting two different compounds together and tighter production tolerances.
So instead they make a tyre that looks like the top-end tyre but won’t be constructed in the same way.
Et voila! Your OE-spec tyre is born.
Shooting yourself in the foot
The tyre manufacturer gets to fulfil a large order and make a profit. The accounts department at the motorcycle manufacturer is happy because they’ve saved money and saving money means more profit! The motorcycle manufacturer’s R&D team are probably too busy working on the next project but they’ll have tested the bike on the stock tyres and will be happy that it meets their minimum requirements – even though they know it could be better.
When the bike is launched to the press, some of the manufacturers are switched on enough to know they need to fit the proper tyres before the members of the press swing their leg over the bike, or else the bike will feel terrible and get panned. It does happen; we’ve read lots of reviews where a tyre is pin-pointed as the part of the bike that lets it down. That must make the bike’s R&D team immensely frustrated.
The issue then, gets passed down the chain. It lands squarely in the lap of the poor sod who just shelled out on a brand-new bike. That’s you.
Of all the vehicles out there, we’d argue that a motorcycle is the last one where you should be saving money on your tyres. But think about it: the accounts department at the motorcycle manufacturer doesn’t care about how your bike feels on the B660 on a sunny Sunday morning. They’re after short-term gain. Cash, moolah, cha-ching.
The worst culprits are the Japanese manufacturers but this is starting to change. Most of the European motorcycle manufacturers supply their bikes with better-quality OE tyres.
We see the OE tyre supplier losing out
The weird bit we don’t understand is why the tyre manufacturers play this game. If my brand-new motorcycle came on poor-quality tyres, I would replace them but I’d probably never fit that brand of tyre again. Ever, to anything. Not even on my lawnmower.
And our customers think in exactly the same way. We won’t name the marque but a certain Japanese motorcycle manufacturer supplies (most of) their new bikes on really poor quality tyres. I estimate that 8 out of 10 customers who come to our shop to replace their tyres specify that they’d be happy to consider any other option, just not whatever the bike came on. Even if we make it clear that the OE-spec tyre is different to the one on the shelf, they won’t go for it. And I don’t blame them.
The customer changes to a different tyre – any tyre! – and their bike is transformed. Their confidence sky-rockets, their riding enjoyment increases and they attribute this to the new brand of tyre. So it’s nil points to the OEM tyre supplier who hands the accolade to a different tyre manufacturer.
Once a customer gets onto a brand of tyre that they like, it’s very hard to get them off it.
Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
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