We Test the Brand New Continental Terrain Contact A/T and General Grabber X3
Unpaved
General Tire Grabber X3
We were recently let loose in the hills of Farmington, Pennsylvania, to test out General Tire’s latest offering from its Grabber line of light truck tires. The new Grabber X3 takes the “3” in its name very seriously, having been designed to provide extreme performance in mud, dirt, and rock.
Travis Roffler, director of marketing for General Tire, realizes the high demands required from the off-road enthusiasts and is confident this new GRABBER X3 will exceed their expectations.
"We are excited for the new Grabber X3 to join the strong line-up of off-road tires that General is known to provide," Roffler said. "More than 3 years of research and development have gone into the development of the X3. We have anticipated the launch of the Grabber X3 into the mud-terrain market and are extremely confident we have a product that will meet the demands required by those looking for this type of tire."
Over 500 hours of off-road testing, more than 1,000 tires built and tested, and well over two million miles of testing in a variety of extreme conditions was performed before the X3 was finalized. For mud, the tire offers a high void pattern design, evacuation channels, and alternating shoulder scoops. For dirt, there are block chamfers, traction notches, and stone bumpers. For rock, the tire is equipped with multi-angle gripping edges, deflection ribs and pads, and sidewall lugs. Three-ply construction is standard in all sizes, and they feature Duragen, a robust compound and ultra-high-strength steel belts. On-road features include siped design for wet and winter performance and a multi-pitch pattern design to minimize noise.
There’s nothing that discourages us more than a new tire with severely limited availability in terms of sizes. The Grabber X3 will offer 29 sizes right out of the box! Expect 31- to 37-inch diameters with rim diameters from 15 to 20 inches, and all the popular metric sizes in-between.
For our testing purposes, we were turned loose in the extremely muddy hills in mostly stock Jeep JKs, where we covered a day’s worth of miles of pavement, gravel, rocks, and some of the deepest, slimiest mud us California folk had ever seen. The Grabber X3s took it all in stride. We’ve always said if you’re testing a tire and can’t find anything to complain about, then they must have done something right. Is this case, the three years of research has paid off in spades, providing a quiet, versatile tire that will soon be making waves in the mud-terrain market, no doubt. Our not-so-leisurely stroll soon became a contest to find the toughest lines to follow, biggest rocks to roll over, and deepest mud pits to transverse, and the Grabber X3s never even noticed! For more info on the new X3, visit www.generalTire.com.
