Michelin (full name: SCA Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin) ( ) based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne région of France, is primarily a tyre manufacturer, the worlds largest. It is also famous 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 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 is in Clermont-Ferrand, 424 km south of [[Paris, France.

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, one which did not need to be glued to the rim. 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 August 2008, Michelin is the world's second largest tyre manufacturer after Bridgestone, although it was in first position in 2005.

Formula One

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.