It is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world behind Bridgestone and larger than both Goodyear and Continental. Michelin is also notable for its Red and Green travel guides , its roadmaps , the Michelin stars that the Red Guide awards to restaurants for their cooking, and for its company mascot Bibendum , colloquially known as the Michelin Man, who is a humanoid consisting of tyres. Michelin's numerous inventions include the removable tyre, the pneurail a tyre for rubber-tyred metros and the radial tyre.
Michelin manufactures tyres for Space Shuttles , [ 4 ] aircraft , automobiles , heavy equipment , motorcycles , and bicycles. In , the group produced million tyres at 69 facilities located in 18 countries.
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.
After only a few hundred metres, the tyre failed. Michelin was incorporated on 28 May In Michelin took out its first patent for a removable pneumatic tyre which was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long-distance cycle race, the ParisβBrestβParis.
In the s and s, Michelin operated large rubber plantations in Vietnam. In , Michelin introduced a tyre which, if punctured, would run on a special foam lining, a design now known as a run-flat tyre self-supporting type. Michelin developed and patented a key innovation in tyre history, the radial tyre , and successfully exploited this technological innovation to become one of the world's leading tyre manufacturers.
