A longtime favourite brand 
still provides consistent results.

Every rider has a favourite tire. Marc Marquez loves Michelins, all seven of his MotoGP titles coming on French rubber. Three-time Superbike champion, Toprak Razgatlıoğlu, meanwhile, can’t wait to get back on his preferred Pirellis which, if the recent Brno test is any indication, will see him transformed from back-marker to front-runner. And Valentino Rossi? Well, in the early part of his career he won titles on both Michelins and Bridgestones, but even though age is most often blamed for his rapid decline in 2020, that was also the year Michelin introduced its now famous stiff-carcassed rear tire that changed the way race engineers designed motorcycles and how riders rode them. Like I said, everyone has a favourite tire … or at least a favourite tire characteristic.

I like Avons. All my bikes end up on Avons at some point in time. From ancient superbike Honda CB1100RC to crap-can adventure touring Suzuki V-Stroms, slapping on a set of Avons always feels like a return home, a safe place where I can do occasionally stupid things and not get bitten.

The latest set is the Spirit STs I slipped onto my 2018 DL1000XT that I use to prowl around Italy. Like the Trailriders — also by Avon — it used to wear, their defining characteristic is neutral handling, defined roughly as the ability to turn into a corner with exactly the lean angle your synapsis directed through the handlebar.

The desire for such neutrality might seem obvious, but it is far from universal amongst tire brands. Some tires — big, ole Dunlops, for instance — tend to fall into corners, generating more lean angle than you might have initially desired. That might be good for pure sport bikes looking for lap times, but it’s just plain tiring on a sport touring motorcycle no matter how much — as I do on the mountain passes my XT haunts — you emphasize the sport part of that equation. 

Others — Metzelers come to mind here — tend to resist turning, their natural tendency to require constant input to retain a graceful arc. Not my XT’s new Spirits, turn-in being directly proportional to the lean angle desired and once attained, they hold that line — neither “falling in” or “standing up” — with zero input. Hence, their neutral handling.

Interestingly, this is a trait common to all Avons. My Suzuki adventure bike has worn the sport-touring Spirits and adventure style Trailriders, my ancient CB1100RC wore the brand’s now discontinued Storms, and I’ve had a few BMWs that had some now-forgotten model Avons. All exhibited the same trait, the feeling your neurons were synaptically connected to the lean angle your bike was holding in each and every corner. 

The more I learn about tires, the more I now understand that tire manufacturers have “philosophies” that guide their design that results in their products having specific “personalities.” If that seems like a lame-assed attempt to anthropomorphize blobs of rubber, understand that I have interviewed plenty of tire engineers over the years.

The real kicker — that which really makes me such a fan of Avon, the brand — is that all the tires mentioned above maintain said neutrality throughout their life. As most motorcycle tires wear, handling tends to deteriorate, most notably when the rear “squares off.” Rather than linearly increasing lean angle as you enter a corner, they develop a little hitch as they transition from the now flat(ish) centre section to the outer, still-curved, radii. Michelin’s Pilots tend to be the worst at this in my experience.

Not the Spirits. My rear Avon now has 9,000 kilometres on it — much of it heavily-loaded two-up tours on high-speed Italian autostradas — and my aging Suzuki still glides into corners with the same confidence as it did when they were new this spring. Previous Avons — the Trailriders on the V-Strom and Storms on my classic bikes — exhibited more or less the same continuity as they wore down to their wear markers. 

I fully expect to get 12,500 or more kilometres from them and will only replace them at the end of the year — even if they haven’t quite that mileage — so I have fresh tires to start next year’s riding season.

All, however, is not perfect though the problems have nothing to do with the performance and everything to do with brand management. I don’t know if it’s the inevitable rationalization of corporate mergers or the often equally inevitable slide of storied brands. Whatever is going on, Avon’s once robust model lineup has been dramatically reduced to but five options — not counting its classic line — and one of the tires that got chopped was my cherished Trailriders.

As for the Spirit STs, they’re pretty darned good, if not quite the impeccable all-rounders those Trailriders were. Tires, it seems, can be a little like a favourite pair of running shoes. You finally find one that fits you — or your bike! — perfectly and the manufacturer either drops them or “upgrades” their rubber so they no longer fit you as they once did. In the meantime, a rear 150/70ZR17 Spirit ST costs around $195.99 while a front 110/80ZR19 will set you back approximately $191.99.