Michelin

This article is about Michelin tyres, maps and tourist guides. For Michelin Stars and restaurants, see Michelin Guide.

Michelin

Michelin
Company type	Public SCA (Euronext: ML)
Industry	Manufacturing, publishing
Founded	1888
Headquarters	Clermont-Ferrand , France
Key people	Michel Rollier (General partner and CEO), Eric Bourdais de Charbonnière (Chairman of the board)
Products	Tyres, travel assistance services
Revenue	€16.41 billion (2008)
Operating income	€843 million (2008)
Net income	€357 million (2008)
Number of employees	117,560 (2008)
Website	www.michelin.com

Michelin (full name: [SCA Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) (Euronext: ML) based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne région of France, is primarily a tyre manufacturer, currently the world's 2nd largest. It is also notable for its Red and Green travel guides, for the Michelin stars that the Red Guide awards to restaurants for their cooking, for its road maps, and for its emblem, the Michelin Man.

The tyre manufacturing subsidiary is officially called [Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), "Michelin tyre manufacturing company of France." The company headquarters is in Clermont-Ferrand, 424 km south of Paris, France. In addition to the Michelin brand, it also owns the B.F. Goodrich and Uniroyal tyre brands.

Michelin is currently ranked first in the global tyre market, with Bridgestone second, Goodyear third, and Continental and Pirelli fourth and fifth, respectively.

Tyres and wheels

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, and 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 metres, the tyre failed. Despite the setback, Édouard was enthusiastic about the pneumatic tyre, and he and his brother worked on creating their own version, one which did not need to be glued to the rim.

Michelin tyre plant in Waterville, Nova Scotia

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

Michelin has made a number of innovations to tyres, including in 1946 the radial tyre (then known as the "X" tyre). It was developed with the front-wheel-drive Citroën Traction Avant and Citroën 2CV in mind. Michelin had bought the then bankrupt Citroën in the 1930s. As of August 2008, 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, it bought Uniroyal, Inc., founded in 1892 as the United States Rubber Company. Uniroyal Australia had already been bought by Bridgestone in 1980.

As of 1 September 2008, Michelin is again the world's largest tyre manufacturer after spending two years as number two behind Bridgestone. Michelin produces tyres in France, Germany, USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, and several other countries.

MotoGP

Michelin participated in MotoGP from 1972 to 2008. They introduced radial construction to MotoGP in 1984, and multi-compound tyres in 1994. They achieved 360 victories in 36 years, and from 1993 to 2006, the world championship had gone to a rider on Michelins.

In 2007, Casey Stoner on Bridgestone tyres won the world championship in dominating fashion, and Valentino Rossi and other top riders complained that Michelins were inferior. Rossi wanted Bridgestones for the 2008 season, but Bridgestone was reluctant to provide them; Dorna threatened to impose a control tyre on the series, after which Bridgestone relented.

In 2008, Michelin's tyres continued to be perceived as being inferior to Bridgestone's, and Michelin committed errors of judgment in allocating adequate tyres for some of the race weekends. Dani Pedrosa's team switched to Bridgestones in the midst of the season, a highly unusual move that caused friction between Honda Racing Corporation and their sponsor Repsol YPF. Other riders also expressed concerns and it seemed that Michelin might not have any factory riders for the 2009 season, leading to rumors that Michelin would withdraw from the series altogether. Dorna and the FIM announced that a control tyre would be imposed on MotoGP for the 2009 season and Michelin did not enter a bid, effectively ending its participation in the series at the end of 2008.

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 tyre 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, supplying 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 tyres were initially uncompetitive but by 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, it announced that it would provide 20,000 complimentary tickets for the 2006 race to spectators who had attended the 2005 event.

Michelin has 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 that it would not extend its involvement in Formula One beyond the 2006 season. Bridgestone has since then been the sole supplier of tyres 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.

Noteworthily, Michelin has also been found to be in breach of EC Competition law for offering unethical discounts to their dealers. This has occurred twice.

Recent developments

• Pax System
• Tweel
• X One

ActiveWheel

Main article: ActiveWheel

ActiveWheel from Michelin includes in-wheel electric motors to free up space in the front or rear of the vehicle. This model also eliminates the need for other notorious space hogs like transmissions and exhaust systems. The wheels, already have a vehicle ready to receive them, the Heuliez Will from Opel, and are also expected to come standard on the Venturi Volage sometime in 2012 .

Tyre Retailer

Tyre retail in Europe with ATS Euromaster and TCI in the US

Other products

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.

Maps

Michelin publishes a variety of road maps, mostly of France but also of other European countries, Africa, Thailand and the United States. They have recently embarked in e-commerce selling Michelin maps and guides directly to the public through, for example, their UK website [1].

Online mapping

ViaMichelin is a wholly owned subsidiary of Michelin Group, and was started in 2001, to represent Michelin’s digital mapping services. As of August 2008, ViaMichelin generates 400 million maps and routes per month on its main website.

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.

Bibendum

Original 1898 poster featuring Bibendum.

The company's symbol is Bibendum (aka "Bib the Michelin Man", "Bibelobis", or simply the "Michelin Man"), introduced at the Lyons Exhibition of 1894 where the Michelin brothers had a stand. Along with his eponymous slogan ("Nunc est bibendum"), he was the creation of the French artist "O'Galop" (a 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] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("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] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("That is to say, to your health. The Michelin tyre 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 someone obese or wearing comically bulky clothing. (e.g. "How can I wrap up warm without looking like the Michelin Man?")

In Spanish, Michelín has acquired the meaning of the "spare tyre", or folds of fatty skin around the waist.

Bibendum's shape has changed over the years. O'Galop's logo was based on bicycle tyres, wore pince-nez glasses with lanyard, and smoked a cigar. By the 1980s, Bibendum was being shown running, and in 1998, his 100th anniversary, a slimmed-down version became the company's new logo. He had long since given up the cigar and pince-nez. The slimming of the logo reflected lower-profile, smaller tyres of modern cars. Bib even had 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'.

Michelin Challenge Bibendum

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

Management

2008 picture of Michelin North America headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, United States.

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. His death brought a non-member of the Michelin family, Michel Rollier, to the head of the company.

See also

• Pirelli

External links

• Official site
  • Michelin guide website
  • Michelin digital mapping services

Data

• Yahoo! - Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin Company Profile