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P128 PRODUCT REVIEW I •GRIP WHILE LEANED OVER ON LOOSE GROUND •WET-WEATHER PERFORMANCE •INITIAL TURN-IN SPEED HAS BEEN REDUCED COMPARED TO KAROO 3 S TANDOUT FEATURE Exceptional sand performance and in particular, wet-weather grip RIDER AN ALYSIS Normally, when you're given ADV tires to test, you're pointed to a dusty paddock and told to come back in an hour. Not this time. For the Karoo 4, we headed to the prehistoric wonderland that is Iceland as part of the Dainese Expedition Masters tour. Iceland is probably the single best place in the world to test ADV tires with soft, volcanic sand, wind, cold, heat, hard pack dirt and lots (and I mean, lots) of belting rain—the kind of weather you'd expect to find on a real ADV tour. I've ridden more bikes on the Karoo 3 than I could possibly remember, although I do remember having a BMW GS 1250 Adventure for a year in 2013 and put the best part of 6000 miles on a set of very worn out K3s. It was an excellent tire and considering its age, it held up very well against the new gen- eration of tires from Bridgestone, Michelin, and parent company, Pire- lli with the Scorpion Rally STR. What I liked about the Karoo 3 was it handled sandy conditions exceptionally well. You could always tell what it was doing beneath you, but what I didn't like was the road noise you'd get in everyday riding. Much like big 4x4 tires, you knew you were riding on semi-knobbies with the Karoo 3s. The Karoo 4s, however, have much less road noise coming from them at speed, a small but nice feature. On the trail, two things stood out. We did a lot of riding up the LOWDOWN sides of hills in Iceland (even rode up the side of a volcano, no joke) so it gave the tire plenty of time to show off its shoulder stability in wet and dry dirt. Wet dirt was no problem, but it was nice to see how much traction was offered in loose topsoil while riding not in an entirely straight line—a subject that wasn't all that surprising given the Karoo 3's strengths. We didn't spend much time on any rocky terrain (go off the main roads in Iceland and you could be up for jail time, seriously), so I'll leave my comments on rock hop- ping until we try the Karoo 4s in SoCal, but I can confirm just how good they are in the driving, hard- core rain, first on the trail and then on the road, which we got about 100 miles' worth in one afternoon. Stability under brakes in the rain was very impressive on the wet dirt, which, to be fair, should be its natu- ral habitat. However, on the street, with all the associated runoff water and the constant 'death rainbow' of oil from cars ahead coating the road surface, the Karoo 4's perfor- mance was exceptional, especially from the front. Metzeler's design team has worked with the specific goal of increasing wet-weather grip, and when mated to the modern Corner- ing ABS system on the Multistrada V4 S, I feel it's a goal attained. The Karoo 4s are indeed a step- up in overall performance from the Karoo 3, a tire which had an enviable reputation in the 50/50 category. Rennie Scaysbrook Water crossings were no problem for the Karoo 4s.