It’s not just the car that’s grown. This August Mini officially began celebrating the iconic marque’s 60th anniversary. We at Tyres & Accessories wanted to join in with the celebrations by sharing a couple of interesting points about how the Mini’s tyres have evolved over the last 60 years.
The combination of increasing demand for MOTs and stricter test criteria look likely to create a boom in demand at garages and for tyres in particular.
After years of post-financial crisis scrappage schemes and investment, the UK car industry got used to boom times and consecutive year-on-year growth.
Bridgestone’s successful acquisition of TomTom Telematics follows earlier reports that both Michelin and Bridgestone were vying to buy the Telematics business unit from Netherlands-based company TomTom. In addition, according to Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad, Michelin was one of four in the running. For its part, Michelin was allegedly aiming to add the business into its Michelin Solutions portfolio. Clearly, in order to maintain its original plans and to compete with Bridgestone, Michelin will now have to find an alternative way of moving forward.
67 per cent of drivers don’t think winter tyres are worth the investment, according to an online poll conducted by Co-op Insurance on 25 January 2019. The Twitter-based poll received votes from 4,084 individuals and a stream of interesting comments on the subject followed.
Global motorsport tyre brand Dmack has announced that it will “open its own tyre manufacturing facility” in Italy, following a deal to use part of Marangoni’s Rovereto plant in northern Italy. The Carlisle-based brand said it would be “capable of producing up to 250,000 tyres per year” at Rovereto, with the “flexibility to tailor short production runs for very specific applications and to meet demands for control tyre championships.” The company adds that it wants to transfer its technical capability into racing by producing world-class products for the circuit racing and track markets. Most famous for supplying tyres to the FIA World Rally Championship since 2011, Dmack tyres were previously produced by Chinese manufacturer, Shandong Yongtai, which recently went into administration, before shifting to Cooper Tires’ UK factory in Melksham, which itself is set to reduce production by a half when it halts production of road-going light vehicle tyres next year.
The UK’s high performance tyre sector – in this case defined by tyre diameters of 17” and above – has continued its growth trend, but at a very much slower rate than in 2017.
Responding to the digital transformation in the Off-the-Road (OTR) vehicle and equipment industry, on 23 April Goodyear introduced two new digital innovations to help OTR fleets reduce their total cost of ownership at the Intermat show in Paris.
Pro-Align has launched the latest Hunter wheel alignment system, developed through widespread customer feedback to merge mid-level imaging with a fully upgradable package. The UK distributor told Tyres & Accessories that the new Hunter PA200 ACE has been developed for budget conscious workshops keen to enter the world of premium Hunter four wheel alignment servicing, receiving the best of the American brand’s alignment features in a mid-level system – a result of feedback from UK workshops.
15 months after bidding got underway, Qingdao-based Doublestar and its consortium of Chinese banks and investors bought 45 per cent of the South Korean tyremaker Kumho Tire over the Easter weekend. Whatever other clauses are written into the deal, following the release of shares issued for the purpose of the sale, Kumho Tire’s creditors will own a 23.1 per cent shareholding in the tyre maker, down from 42.01 per cent. This makes the Chinese tyre firm controlling shareholders in South Korea’s Kumho Tire.
Goodyear’s latest concept tyre, introduced at the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show in March, once again sees the company look forward in a bid to lead discussions relating to the future of mobility. However, this also has an inevitable impact on the future of the tyre industry – which is where Goodyear’s FACE (Fleet Autonomous Connected Electric) acronym comes in. More on that later. First, the headline grabbing products – the Oxygene and the EfficientGrip Performance with Electric Drive Technology.
MWheels will meet with the Department for Transport (DfT) and DVSA to understand why the EU Roadworthiness Directive, and its section on CV wheels, has not been incorporated in UK law. The DfT’s draft Heavy Goods Vehicle Inspection Manual, due to come into force from 20 May 2018, shows “no major changes” to section 06, Road Wheels and Hubs. This is despite the British firm’s eight-year campaign, which saw major input in both Periodic (2014/45/EU) and Roadside (2014/47/EU) documents. Both were expected to be fully adopted by all 27 Member States as part of the EU’s drive to create standardised inspection procedures.
Bentley has been unveiling what it calls the first hybrid electric super-luxury car at the Geneva Motor Show. Other manufacturers (like Porsche) may disagree with this assertion, but the launch marks something of a landmark for the industry with more and more emphasis being paid to the new generation of electric and hybrid vehicles. Indeed, during the company’s latest financial results, Pirelli’s Marco Tronchettic Provera even spoke about the digitisation of the company’s business as if it is normal – something that was followed by the launch of Pirelli’s Cyber Car in Geneva at the start of March. In short, the Cyber Car system offers an OEM solution to send data from the tyres to the car and from the car to the cloud for the benefit of that particular driver as well as road-users in general.
In our February Car Tyre feature, Tyres & Accessories published some of the latest UK tyre replacement market trends data produced by GfK. That data suggested that SUV tyre sales data was a key driver of both increased rim size as well as volume and value growth in the market. This month, as part of our SUV tyres feature, we take a closer look at the trends in the 4×4 and SUV sector specifically and find that the trends are repeated and developed within the sector.
On 7 December 2017, at the annual supplier conference at the Auditorium G. Agnelli Lingotto in Turin (Italy), Goodyear was awarded “Chassis Supplier of the Year” by the famous Italian-American car manufacturer Fiat Chrysler Automobiles EMEA. It is the first time a tyremaker has received the award.
Scottish fuel firm Carnegie Fuels typically delivers to farms, industrial areas and residential properties that can often only be accessed on rocky off-road terrain – putting the 6×2 rigid tanker fleet’s fitments at an increased risk of stone cuts and ingress.
Following a visit from one of Michelin’s Technical Managers, Dan Lamb, last summer, owner Kevin Carnegie agreed to trial sets of Michelin X Works D drive axle tyres and XZY3 steer and tag axle fitments on two of his 13 delivery vehicles.