GOODYEAR TYRES in the nineties part 2

Goodyear tyres in stores wars ?

Goodyear s chairman Mr Gaults decided that they would sell Goodyear tyres in the Sears tyre stores. This was fine until the following year he began to sell the Goodyear product through Wall Mart and a chain of tyre stores known as Discount tyre chain. This move angered other Goodyear tyre dealers and were seen these large chains cutting the price of the Goodyear products.

Here in the UK Goodyear owned Kelly Springfield tyres and a lesser known Lee tyres. I was a Kelly dealer in Yorkshire and became very successful, until Goodyear decided that we should be selling Goodyear and not Kelly messing everything up, until we changed brands to Pirelli tyres.

Back to Goodyear ,who in the early nineties began to make good profits again. Goodyear began to expand abroad and had merges with other tyre companies in India (Ceat tyres) and China (Gold Lion tyre). In 1996 Goodyear tyres made a successful take over bid for Debica tyres in Poland, mainly because of the lower pay structure of the Polish workers, thus making bigger profits.

The tyre giants then decided that they would expand to South Africa buying out a company called “Anglovaal Industries” its self a maker of tyres. Goodyear then entered into a manufacturing agreement with Sumitomo tyres in Japan, making tyres for each other in Asia and North America.

They did not finish there they signed an agreement with the “Sava tyre group” of Slovenia, giving Goodyear tyres a controlling share of 60%.Goodyear were also buying up tyre retailing groups and here in the UK they formed a company called “Tyreservices Ltd” formed out of buying out smaller retailers. In America they bought out retail companies Penske Auto Centres and Montgomery-Ward,both combined forming well over a thousand outlets, a massive step forward.

Goodyear tyres bring out a new “Runflat tyre” called the EMT

This new tyre enabled a car with a puncture to be driven up to 200 miles at 50 mph which would eliminate the need for a spare wheel. The tyre was not very popular because or its high price tag.

And was later scrapped. This is now ironic because we now use many runflat tyres on the modern type cars, including Goodyear runflats, although these are now going out of favour due to the uncomfortable hard ride for the drivers, due to the extra strength side walls required to run the tyres without air.