Michelin

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This article 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, Flag of France 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, the Michelin Man.

The tyre manufacturing subsidiary is officially called Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin, "Michelin tyre manufacturing company of France". The company headquarters are located in Clermont-Ferrand, 424 km south of Paris, France.

Contents

[edit] Tyres

[edit] History

Two brothers, Édouard and André Michelin, ran a rubber factory in Clermont-Ferrand, France. One day, a cyclist whose pneumatic tyre needed repair turned up at the factory. The tyre was glued to the rim. It took over three hours to remove and repair the tyre, which then needed to be left overnight to dry. The next day, Édouard Michelin took the repaired bicycle into the factory yard to test. After only a few hundred meters, the tyre failed. Despite the setback, Édouard was enthusiastic about the pneumatic tire and along with his brother, worked on creating their own, one which did not need to be glued to the rim.

Michelin tire plant in Waterville, Nova Scotia
Michelin tire plant in Waterville, Nova Scotia

Michelin was incorporated on 28 May 1888. In 1891, they took out their first patent for a removable pneumatic tyre.

Michelin has made a number of innovations to tyres, including in 1946 the radial tire (then known as the "X" tire).[1] This tyre was developed with the front wheel drive Citroen Traction Avant and Citroën 2CV in mind. Michelin had bought the then bankrupt Citroen in the 1930s. This tyre is still available for the 2CV.

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, although it was in first position in 2005.[2]

[edit] Formula One

See also: Formula One tyres

Michelin first competed in the 1977 Formula One season, when Renault started development of their turbocharged F1 car. Michelin introduced radial tire technology to Formula One and won the Formula One 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 but in the 2005 season were totally dominant. This was partly because the new regulations stated that tyres must last the whole race distance (and qualifying), and partly because only one top team (Ferrari) was running Bridgestones, and so had to do much of the development work. Michelin in contrast had much more testing and race data provided by the larger number of teams running their tyres.

Following the debacle of the 2005 United States Grand Prix, where, because of safety concerns, Michelin would not allow the teams it supplies to race, Michelin's share price fell by 2.5% (though it recovered later the same day). On 28 June, Michelin announced that it would offer compensation to all race fans who had bought 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 at 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 bone of contention 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 would not extend their involvement in Formula One beyond the 2006 season.[3] Bridgestone has since then been the sole supplier of tires to Formula One.

The last race won on Michelin Tyres in Formula One was the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso benefitting after the Ferrari engine of Michael Schumacher failed during the race. This gave Michelin a second consecutive Constructors Championship win, with the 2005 and 2006, after Bridgestone's seven-year winning streak, and brought to a total of four the number of wins for Michelin since this event's inception back in the 1958 Formula One season; Michelin's other wins were in the 1979, and 1984 seasons.

[edit] Recent Developments

Pax System, Tweel, X One

[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] Online Mapping

ViaMichelin is a wholly owned subsidiary of Michelin Group, and was started in 2001, to represent Michelin’s digital mapping services. ViaMichelin currently generates 400 million maps and routes per month on its main website.[4]

ViaMichelin provides mapping and travel solutions for internet, mobile and satellite navigation products with street level coverage of Europe, USA, Australia, and parts of Asia and South America.

[edit] Bibendum

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

The company's symbol is Bibendum, (aka "Bib the Michelin Man", or simply the "Michelin Man"),[5] 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[citation needed], 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 C'est à dire: À votre santé. Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle ("That is to say, to your health: The Michelin tire drinks 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 a Michelin Man?"[6].

In Spain, Michelín[7] 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 period-appropriate pince-nez glasses with lanyard, and smoked a cigar. By the 1980s, 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 tires on sport compact automobiles and a more athletic, slimmer, and trimmer Bib, along with Bib even having a similar-looking puppy as a companion when the duo were CGI animated for recent American television advertisements.

Bibendum made a brief guest appearance in the Asterix series, as the chariot-wheel dealer in certain translations, including the English one, 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 novel Pattern Recognition. Michelin sued the performance artist Momus for releasing a song about the trademarked Michelin Man.

French reggae band Tryo have sung about Bibendum on their album Grain De Sable. 'Monsieur Bibendum, il est vraiment énorme / Monsieur Bibendum, le bonheur en personne' - 'Mr Bibendum, he is truly enormous, Mr Bibendum; happiness in person.

[edit] Michelin Challenge Bibendum

The Michelin Challenge Bibendum is an annual major sustainable mobility event.

[edit] Management

From 1999, the company was headed by CEO Édouard Michelin. On 26 May 2006, Édouard drowned while fishing near the island of Sein, off the coast of Brittany.[8]

The death of Édouard Michelin brought a non-member of the Michelin family, Michel Rollier, to the head of the company.[9]

[edit] Trivia

[edit] References

  1. ^ Travaux de la commission des finances
  2. ^ http://gestdoc.webmichelin.com/repository/backoffice/DocumentRepositoryServlet?codeDocument=292&codeRepository=MICHCORP&codeRubrique=CORP
  3. ^ F1 News - Michelin will not extend its Formula One involvement beyond the 2006 season - Michelin - 14 December 2005
  4. ^ ViaMichelin: street map, maps, map UK, route finder, route planner, directions, road map, route map
  5. ^ Michelin Corporate - Bibendum, the Michelin man, the living tire
  6. ^ Kenny has a big pair of gloves to fill | News | guardian.co.uk Football
  7. ^ Diccionario de la Real Academia Española.
  8. ^ Michelin CEO Edouard Michelin has died - police - Forbes.com
  9. ^ Free Preview - WSJ.com
  10. ^ Super-Besse

[edit] External links

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[edit] Data


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