Therein lies a tale. Both the American automobile manufacturers and the tire companies fought the radial tire. Detroit, home of the American automobile, was afraid of how much it would cost to redesign automobile suspensions to accept radial tires.
The tire industry was afraid of how much it would cost to retool the entire American tire industry to make the more costly radial tires. With the notable exception of B. Goodrich bucked this trend by investing heavily in radial tire technology, only to have their tire—the Silvertown Radial , introduced in —snubbed by the American automobile industry.
Eventually Goodrich sold its tire operations and got out of the tire business. The bias-belted tire simply added a fiberglas belt to the bias-ply tire. The bias-belted tire would last 30, miles compared to 40, for radial and 23, for bias-ply tires. It could be used on cars designed for bias-ply tires. Best of all, it could be made on existing bias-ply tire-making machines, which made its cost not much more than a bias-ply tire.
Fueled by a Goodyear advertising blitz, bias-belted tire sales rose from 2 percent of the original-equipment market in to 87 percent by the early s. To forestall aquaplaning at elevated speeds, evacuation of water was give priority over noise abatement. As a result, no continuous ribs were utilised, only small tread blocks with a high void-to-tread ratio.
Extensive hand-work was utilized in the production process of the XWX making them quite expensive; they sold for nearly twice the price of an XAS. The BMW 3. Michelin alone built fifteen new factories for radial tyre production between and As availability increased, radials began to be supplied on several additional automotive models as original equipment.
The VW , the first Volkswagen to leave the factory wearing radial-ply tyres as standard fitment. Fiat fit them on their more sporting models as well as the and , and VW specified them on the and American manufacturers were slower to adopt the new technology: the only U.
The radial tyre, along with the disc brake, was one of the key mid-century breakthroughs in automotive performance, providing much improved handling and steering response. After the Arab oil embargo of , another radial advantage, lower rolling resistance, came to the fore. The increased fuel efficiency this provided finally led to adoption of the radial tyre throughout the industry, with American and Japanese manufacturers joining the Europeans in fitting radial tyres to all models. Thank you for a very informative article, and of course Lancia were innovative and farsighted as usual in the decision to fit the X on the Aurelia.
In , the allies thought that their troops might find it difficult to progress on French roads, all road signs having being destroyed by occupying forces.
A secret agreement was made with Michelin to reprint in Washington the edition of the famed Michelin Guide the last to be published before war broke out. Copies were distributed to each officer, for military use, since the Guide included not just restaurant and hotel addresses, but hundreds of detailed up-to-date maps of French cities and towns.
The XWX. But there is must less debate about the suggestion that Arthur W. Infographic: Giles Kirkland, first published at Oponeo. Reinventing the wheel: A brief history of tyres. Published by Chris Anthony. The timeline not only evokes memories, but it will highlight many of the technologies that motorsport has brought to the wider motoring world.
UK drivers want a full-size spare tyre Car review website Carbuyer. When asking a sample group of more than a thousand motorists which characteristics of modern cars annoy them most, two out of three named the lack of a full-size spare tyre.
Even Lancia, another automotive factory traditionally sensitive to innovation, was among the first to adopt it as original equipment on its Aurelia, the same Aurelia B20 that, equipped with Michelin X radial tires and driven by Giovanni Bracco and Giovanni Lurani, came twelfth overall and first in its category at the 24 hours of Le Mans in After this success, the superiority of the Michelin X is such that many drivers adopt it even though the French company does not officially participate in motor racing.
Already in , for example, Pirelli unveiled its Cinturato first example of a radial reinforced with fabric plies , soon to be followed by similar proposals by Continental, Dunlop, Firestone and Uniroyal, all stimulated by the growing interest of the European car market as a whole in this new tire. Meanwhile the radial technology starts finding new applications. In Michelin introduces the first Michelin X Radial for trucks and in makes its debut in Formula 1 with Renault winning four GPs the following year with Ferrari.
It is the beginning of a revolution that goes beyond competition. On motorcycles, the first radial was the Pirelli MP7 which equipped in the European version of the Honda VFR but soon after Michelin introduced radial technology in competitions.
And nowadays tires are almost exclusively radial. Radial or cross-ply? Here are the differences. In a cross-ply tire the plies are disposed in pairs overlapping at different angles less than 90 degrees crossing each other.
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