Off-road adventures are a great way to escape the bustling city life. It connects you with nature and diffuses built-up tension in your body and mind. Mud tires will get you through difficult terrains with ease! However, when you go back to the paved road, these tires will give you a stiff and noisy ride. This makes considering Cooper ATP VS AT3, and both are all-terrain tires, a good option.
Even if you are not an off-road adventure lover, the right tire for your vehicle would greatly improve your driving experience and safety. Your tires are your connection to the ground. You always want all four of them in contact with the ground!
Let’s take a deeper look and study the features of these two Cooper Discoverer variant to help you decide which tire fits your style and need.
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Beyond A Hundred
Cooper Tires have been in the tire industry for a hundred and four years. The age of the company is a testimony that says how much they have endured the trials of time. Since their establishment, they have perfectly understood the importance of having grippy tires in all situations.
Leisurely drives, off-road adventures, and even fast-paced races require excellent grip and handling to ensure the safety of passengers. With safety at the top priority of the people behind the company, they make sure that every tire design and every material they use will have excellent ground traction for every type of environment.
Outward Appearance
Firstly, performance is what makes a tire valuable. Performance makes sure that every job will be done with excellence. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have tires that are aggressively stylish. And besides, before everything else, a visually attractive tire is a plus!
Both these tires are rated AT for All-Terrain. However, the design makes one grippier on the pavement and the other more reliable off the streets. Simply judging by the looks of it, even the inexperienced eyes can tell that Cooper ATP will give you more traction off-pavement.
Cooper ATP has wider spaces between lugs which makes it more aggressive looking and effective off-road. Having Cooper ATP gives your ride that aggressive look. If your wheels have a negative offset, your tires would be more prominent and would give your ride that macho look.
Tire Noise
If this is your first time considering changing your HT tires to AT tires, noise is an issue that many don’t realize immediately. Yes, AT tires will give you some audible noise when going high speed on pavement. This is due to the wider spaces between lugs.
Mud tires pack a lot of noise that you wouldn’t miss when while you are driving. Motorists that you pass by in the freeway knows how much noise mud tires have! All-terrain tires have more tolerable noise, but nonetheless, they are still quite noisy.
Between the two, AT3 has smaller spaces between the five-rib lugs meaning it’s a bit quieter than ATPs. There is really no escaping this tire noise when you are driving with all-terrain tires on the freeway. It’s a trade-off that you have to choose if you want to go to places where the pavement ends.
However, the volume level of your music can help to nullify this noise.
Traction
Traction is what keeps all four of your wheels securely connected to the ground. Without good traction, well, your vehicle may not properly respond to your control input. In short, you may slide off and get to an accident.
Cooper Tires is known to use excellent quality materials for excellent traction. Well, to start with, let me be clear about one thing, you can’t expect an AT tire to have comparable traction on pavement compared with HT tires. The sparse distribution of lugs, compared with HT tires, makes it less grippy on the pavement.
Looking at Cooper ATP and AT3 side by side, both are grippy and reliable on paved roads and freeways. However, you might lose some traction on wet and snow conditions. Nevertheless, these two tires are recommended for all season.
Cooper ATP and AT3 both have a five-rib design. Cooper AT3 has an in-line rib design which makes it better on pavement compared with ATP. However, Cooper ATP has more traction off-road because of its optimized zigzag lugs that have a better grip on rocky plains and loose terrain.
Handling
The tires you equip in your vehicle plays an important role in handling. Acceleration, brake response, and steering are affected by the type of tires you use. Highway terrain tires, as many of us have tried and experienced, have excellent grip and acceleration on the pavement.
Although all-terrain tires are quite a bit handicapped compared with HT tires on the freeway, it gives more off-road grip. HT tires would easily lose its grip on dusty, rocky, and muddy terrains while AT tires can help you get through.
Both Cooper ATP and AT3 have better performance off-road compared with HT tires. But between the two, ATP has the upper hand in challenging off-road terrains. The zigzag pattern of Cooper ATP better conforms with the random off-road terrain. The enforced aggressively designed sidewall of ATP allows it to have more traction even on soft surfaces. This feature also strengthens the sidewalls and make it puncture resistant. This is especially useful in off-road terrains with jagged rocks with sharp edges.
Although ATP performs better off-road, AT3 will give you more handling on paved highways and freeways. Both of these models have serpentine sipes that allow the tires to have more traction on pavement in all weather conditions. However, because AT3 has substantially narrower space between the lugs, it has more tire surface area connected to the ground resulting in more grip and better handling on pavement.
Off-Road Performance
All-terrain tires are designed to give excellent grip over challenging terrains. Cooper ATP and AT3 are both all-terrain rated tires that boast excellent grip off-road and on highways. But that’s not what you want to know right? Well, you want to know how well one fares over the other in terms of off-road terrains.
Let’s take a look at the designs. Cooper AT3 has a five-rib in-line lug. The lugs have visibly wider spacing compared to HT tires. The spaces between lugs allow the tires to claw on off-road terrains and provide better grip where HT tires would slip.
Inspecting Cooper ATP would show you the noticeable lug spacing. A closer look would reveal that ATP has wider spaces between lugs compared with AT3. The lugs are arranged in a zigzag pattern. Cooper ATP’s sidewalls are noticeably thicker and more aggressive.
Cooper ATP’s design allows it to claw on soft off-road terrains at a better rate compared with Cooper AT3. The aggressive sidewalls also give you more traction over muddy terrain. The zigzag lug pattern allows you traction on rocky plains.
Reliability and Durability
If there’s a type of tire that does not wear and doesn’t need to be replaced, would you want to have it? Well, who wouldn’t? Unfortunately, that’s not possible, and all tires are subject to wear and tear. Both APT and AT3 models are covered by up to a maximum of 60,000 miles treadwear protection guarantee. For tires equipped on light trucks, Cooper gives up to 55,000 miles treadwear protection guarantee.
How long will these tires last? It really depends on how frequent you are on the road. According to a survey, an average American drive about around 13,500 miles every year. Given this figure, on average, you would expend your Cooper tires in about four years.
As long as you are not exceeding the load rating of your tires, your tires will last a long time. Depending on the size and variant, you can get a Cooper ATPs with a maximum load rating of 126 (3748lbs each tire), and Cooper AT3s with a maximum of 129 (4079lbs each tire) load rating.
With four tires, you can safely haul up to 8tons of weight (including your vehicles gross weight)!
Conclusion
Surely, you haven’t thought that choosing an all-terrain tire is this intricate? Well, it pays off to do research first before you make a purchase! Before you decide, it’s best to ask yourself how you plan on using your vehicle.
Do you frequent off-road places? How often will you be traversing challenging terrains that HT tires might have difficulties with? Do you want your vehicle to look good?
If you are frequenting places with challenging terrains, Cooper ATP will give you more confidence with its better off-road capability compared to Cooper AT3. However, if you will be using the freeway more often than off-road, Cooper AT3 gives you more traction and handling.
Overall, both tires have excellent grip and handling, and both are rated good for all seasons. It all boils down on how you plan to use your ride and what places you frequent.
If you are planning on some extreme off the grid off-road adventure, maybe you want to consider going full-on mud tires for your safety and enjoyment!
