Michelin

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This page is about Michelin tyres, maps and tourist guides. For Michelin Stars and restaurants, see Michelin Guide.
Michelin, S.A.
Type Public (Euronext: ML)
Founded 1888
Headquarters Clermont-Ferrand, France
Key people Michel Rollier (General Manager)
Industry Manufacturing and publishing
Products Tyres, travel assistance services
Revenue 15.59 billion (2005)
Employees 127,000 (2005)
Website http://www.michelin.com

Michelin (full name: Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin) (Euronext: ML) based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne région of France, is primarily a tyre manufacturer. However, it is also famous for its Red and Green travel guides, for the Michelin stars the Red Guide awards to restaurants for their cooking, for its road maps, and for its historic emblem Bibendum, the Michelin Man.

The tyre manufacturing subsidiary is officially called Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin, "Michelin tyre manufacturing company of France." Michelin's North American headquarters are located in Greenville, South Carolina.

Contents

[edit] History

Incorporated on May 28, 1888, Michelin's activities date back to 1830 in vulcanized rubber, before they moved into tyres for bicycles and later for cars. Michelin owned the automobile manufacturer Citroën between 1934 and 1976.

Michelin has made a number of innovations to tyres, including in 1946 the radial tyre (then known as the "X" tyre). [1]

In 1988, Michelin acquired the tyre and rubber manufacturing divisions of the American B.F. Goodrich Company founded in 1870. Two years later, they bought out Uniroyal Inc., founded in 1892 as the United States Rubber Company, Uniroyal Australia had already been purchased by Bridgestone in 1980.

Michelin is currently the world's second largest tyre manufacturer after Bridgestone[2].

[edit] Formula One

Michelin first entered Formula One in 1977 when Renault F1 started development of their turbocharged car in the series. Michelin introduced radial tyre technology to Formula One and won the drivers championship with Brabham before withdrawing in 1984.

The company returned to Formula One in 2001. In that first year they supplied Williams, Jaguar, Benetton (renamed Renault in 2002), Prost and Minardi. Toyota joined F1 in 2002 with Michelin tyres and McLaren also signed up with the company. Michelin's tyres were initially uncompetitive compared to rival Bridgestone's, however by 2005 Michelin were totally dominant. This was in part due to new regulations stating that tyres must last the whole race distance (and qualifying) and also due to the fact with only one top team running Bridgestone tyres (Ferrari), they alone were responsible for much of the development work. Michelin in contrast had much more testing and race data due to the larger number of teams running their tyres.

Following the 2005 United States Grand Prix, where Michelin would not allow the Formula One teams it supplies to race due to safety concerns, Michelin's share price fell by 2.5% (though it recovered later the same day). On June 28, Michelin announced that it would offer compensation to all race fans who had purchased tickets for the Grand Prix. The company committed to refunding the price of all tickets for the race. Additionally, they announced that they would provide 20,000 complimentary tickets for the 2006 race to spectators who had attended the 2005 event.

Michelin have had a difficult relationship with the sport's governing body (the FIA) since around 2003 and this escalated to apparent disdain between the two parties during the 2005 season. The most high profile disagreement was the United States Grand Prix and the acrimony afterwards. Michelin criticised the FIA's intention to move to a single source (i.e one brand) tyre from 2008 and threatened to withdraw from the sport. In a public rebuke FIA President Max Mosley wrote "There are simple arguments for a single tyre and if (Michelin boss Édouard Michelin) is not aware of this he shows an almost comical lack of knowledge of modern Formula One." Another disagreement has been the reintroduction of tyre changes during pit-stops from 2006. Michelin criticised the move claiming "this event illustrates F1's problems of incoherent decision-making and lack of transparency."

In December 2005 and as a result of the difficult relationship with the sport's governing body, Michelin announced they will not extend their involvement in Formula One beyond the 2006 season.[3] Bridgestone will now be the sole supplier of tyres to Formula One.

The last race won on Michelin Tyres in Formula1 was the Japanese Grand Prix of 2006, Fernando Alonso won the race after the Ferrari engine of Michael Schumacher failed during the race. This gave Michelin a back to back constructors win with seasons 2005 and 2006 and broke their 21 year no win drought. These wins finally broke Bridgestones 7 year continued winning streak and brought to a total of 4 the number of wins for Michelin since the race inception back in 1958 Michelin's other wins were in 1979 and 1984.

[edit] Recent Developments

Pax System, Tweel, X One

[edit] Bibendum

Bibendum (The Michelin Man) as he looked in the early 1990s
Enlarge
Bibendum (The Michelin Man) as he looked in the early 1990s

The company's symbol is Bibendum, the Michelin Man, introduced in 1898 by French artist O'Galop (pseudonym of Marius Rossillon), and one of the world's oldest trademarks. André Michelin apparently commissioned the creation of this jolly, rotund figure after his brother, Édouard, observed that a display of stacked tyres resembled a human form. Today, Bibendum is one of the world's most recognized trademarks, representing Michelin in over 150 countries.

The 1898 poster showed him offering the toast Nunc est bibendum ("Cheers!" or "Now is the time to drink" in Latin) to his scrawny competitors with a glass full of road hazards, with the title and the tag "'À votre santé': Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle" ('Cheers!': The Michelin tyre soaks up obstacles). It is unclear when the word "Bibendum" came to be the name of the character himself. At the latest, it was in 1908, when Michelin commissioned Curnonsky to write a newspaper column signed "Bibendum".

The name of the plump tyre-man has entered the language to describe the appearance of someone obese or wearing comically bulky clothing: "How can I wrap up warm without looking like the Michelin Man?". In Spain, michelín[1] has acquired the meaning of the "tyres" or folds of fatty skin around the waist.

His shape has changed over the years. O'Galop's logo was based on bicycle tyres, and wore glasses and smoked a cigar. By the 1980's, Bibendum was being shown as a running Bib, and in 1998, his 100th anniversary, a slimmed-down version became the company's new logo; his vision had improved, and he had long since given up smoking. The slimming of the logo reflected both lower-profile, smaller tyres on sport compact automobiles and a more athletic, slimmer, and trimmer Bib.

Bibendum made a brief guest appearance in the Asterix series as the chariot wheel dealer in certain translations, including the English translation, of Asterix in Switzerland. (The original French version used the Gaulish warrior mascot of French service station company Antar.) The image also plays a key role in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

[edit] Other products

[edit] Tour guides

Main article: Michelin Guide

Michelin has long published two guidebook series, the Red Guides to hotels and restaurants and the Green Guides for tourism. It now publishes several additional guides as well as digital map and guide products. The city maps in both the Red and the Green guides are of high quality, and are linked to the smaller-scale road maps.

[edit] Maps

Michelin publishes various series of road maps, mostly of France but also on European countries, Africa, Thailand and the United States.

[edit] Management

From 1999 the company was headed by CEO Édouard Michelin. On May 26, 2006, Édouard drowned while fishing near the island of Sein, off the coast of Brittany. [4].

The death of Édouard Michelin has brought a non-member of the Michelin family, Michel Rollier, to the head of the company. [5].

The Current Chief Executive Officer of Michelin India tyres Pvt Ltd is Mr Herve Dub

[edit] Trivia

[edit] References

  1. ^ Diccionario de la Real Academia Española.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] Data


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