Avon Motorcycle Tires: High-Performance Motorcycle Tires for Whatever Kind of Bike You Ride

Avon motorcycle tires might not be the first brand you think of, but they’ve been making high-quality tires for over 100 years. Donnington Park is one of the top racetracks in the world and has hosted both MotoGP and World Superbike races. “Track Attack”, the track day company that operates solely out of Donnington Park, has exclusively used Avon motorcycle tires for their instructors’ bikes since 2007.

And they don’t just make tires for sport bikes. Avon manufactures a complete line of motorcycle tires ranging from sport bikes to cruisers to scooters. Cheap motorcycle tires they’re not, but Avon should be on your short list when shopping for new tires for your bike. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights in the Avon motorcycle tire lineup.

High-Performance Sport Bike Tires

Avon's Viper Xtreme is basically a race tire with treads in it that’s meant to give all-out performance under braking and when leaned way over in corners. It’s DOT-approved for road use, but is really more of a track day tire. Avon really doesn’t recommend these as street tires because they are made with a super-sticky race compound, which means life on the street will be brief (but exciting). If you do fit these tires for a track day, Avon says they come up to temperature quickly and that’s a good thing because you don’t want to be riding around on cold tires at the track. This tire features their ATAC tread profile (Advanced Tread Arc Combination), which is more than a cute acronym. It means the tread profile is not a constant arc, but flattens toward the edges to keep more rubber on the ground when you have your bike cranked over in a corner and need all the grip you can get. You can see that the tread pattern is minimalist even for sportbike tires, so unless you’re putting these on your track day tool, consider something less, well, extreme.
The Viper Supersport model has many of the features of the Xtreme such as the ATAC tread profile, but in a less aggressive package. You can see that the tread pattern is more pronounced on the Supersport. That and the fact that the rubber compound is not as soft as the Xtreme means that the mileage will be better, although this is still a good choice for track day use. As I’ve said elsewhere on this site, unless you’re really, really good on the track, you probably won’t need a race tire, and not one any racier than the Supersport. Even so, the life of these tires will probably be too short for mere mortals like me who still need to put some decent miles on our sportbikes before shelling out a few hundred dollars for new shoes.
Viper Sport – Now these are more like tires for your daily driver, even if your daily driver is a modern superbike. They say it’s the same as the Supersport in appearance, but with a compound that’s more street than track. The compound features Avon’s “SiO2-HD” high-dispersibility silica formulation so it can grip the road in the wet as well as the dry.

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