Michelin
- This page is about Michelin tyres, maps and tourist guides. For Michelin Stars and restaurants, see Michelin Guide.
Michelin (full name: Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin) (Euronext: ML) based in Clermont-Ferrand, France in the Auvergne région of France, is primarily a tyre manufacturer. However, it is also famous for 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"
History
Incorporated on May 28, 1889, 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.
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., a business founded in 1892 as the United States Rubber Company.
Formula One
Michelin stop supplying Formala One teams in 1984 but returned to Formula One in 2001. In that first year they supplied Williams, Jaguar, Benetton (renamed Renault in 2002) and Prost. Toyota joined F1 in 2002 with Michelin tyres and McLaren and Minardi 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 Edouard 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." [1]
Bibendum
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!" 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 tire drinks/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?".
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, 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 Asterix as the chariot wheel dealer in Asterix in Switzerland.
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 various series of road maps, mostly of France but also on European countries, Africa, Thailand and the United States.
Management
The current CEO is Édouard Michelin.
See also
External links
- Official website
- Michelin guide website
- Michelin Sport website
- Michelin maps (in French).
- European Restaurant Ranking
