Michelin’s French tyre factories were once so strategic that allied forces bombed those in Nazi-occupied France during World War Two, before they were later rebuilt.
Today, only a subset of Michelin’s global manufacturing remains in its historic home of Clermont-Ferrand. But the tyres developed there for the Moon buggy, endurance racing and other high-spec products are the buttress the company is counting on to keep its plants in France alive, as Chinese rivals start to encroach on the industry.
“Historically, Michelin went from Clermont to conquer the world. Today that model is no longer possible,” said Michelin’s chief executive Florent Menegaux, warning of a gulf in production costs with Asia which had made exporting mass market products from Europe “virtually impossible”.