Wondering what their thinking is? Tyres seem such a personal preference thing it seems weird to say that a specific tyre is the one they reckon you should be running on a particular wheelset.

First thing I’d probably do is take the tyres off and swap them for what I usually use. I’d also begrudge paying for something I’d toss into the back of the shed and likely never use (though I’m sure the price would be no different without tyres and tubes.)

I’m not keen on it. I think of it as Mavic adding £80 to the price of a set of wheels, for tyres I don’t want.

Mavic are quite new to the tyre game, I see it as them trying to promote their tyres.

Are their tyres not just re-badgged versions of some other manufacturer anyway? Sure I read that on here so it must be true 🙂

Not rebadged exactly but I doubt they’re made inhouse- from the feel of them most likely CST (Maxxis/Specialized/On One among others) but that’s not much more than a guess 😉

Can’t see what it can be other than a promotional thing but it’d put me off. Though tbh I’m not the crossmax market anyway, I think you can get better for much less, but they seem popular so what do I know?

Puts me off them, yeah. Have the SX< love them, but same as the OP, I wouldn’t want to pay for tyres that would be of little use to me.

They’;re heavy, skinny and very much a dry tyre, esp. on the rear. No thanks.

The road ones look like they come from the same factory as vittoria tyres (and I think Specialized ones too) and apparently share much of the construction. Not a bad thing.

I can sort of see why it may be not a complete waste on a road wheel, though I still have strong tyre preferences. But on a mtb wheel it does seem crazy.

The logic is this

The biggest variable in the performance of a wheel is the tyre

Whether that variable is aerodynamic, feel, grip or anything else – tyres make a huge difference, so for example a tyre with a stiff carcass on a stiff wheel feels terrible to ride etc.

Rumour was that in the testing of the CXR aero road wheels they tested a load of different tyre tread, and the different airflow could make about 20% difference to the overall drag of the wheel as a unit.

Now, obviously theres a shit load of marketing and profit margin calculations in there, but when you get down to marginal gains there’s certainly some logic to dealing with the whole thing rather than leaving this huge variable out there.

(to be fair, things can be gotten wrong too, there was talk going on about certain front tyres on the rear to give better grip etc – I think one of the biggest challenges is that if you get a tyre right for ‘where you research’ then it might not work in another area, so some of the tyres were supposedly great on french tarmac but terrible in other places as the blend of tar and stone is different)

Made by Vittoria and Michelin. The Yksions are fine road tyres (less fond of the Aksion I bought by mistake). I’ve worn out one set and replaced with the same. Have them on two bikes (23c and 25c). £10 cheaper than Schwalbe (which are on three other bikes).

Did the price of wheels go up when they started selling with tyres, or is it a loss-leader to gain market share?

I seem to remember the wheelset retail went up by about half the retail cost of the tyres?