Tyres - who owns which brand

[drewf]

Since there are frequently references to budget tyres / mid-price tyres / big brands, here's a reference of which companies own which 'budget' brands typically seen in UK:


Michelin - France

Worlds number one tyre manufacturer. Owns the brands Michelin, BF Goodrich, Kleber, Uniroyal (USA market only!) and Riken.



Bridgestone - Japan

One of the original big three. Owns the brands Bridgestone, Firestone, Daytona and Europa.



Goodyear Dunlop - USA

Goodyear recently merged with Dunlop to form one of the largest tyre manufacturers in the world. Owns the brands Dunlop, Goodyear, Fulda, Falken and Kelly.



Yokohama - Japanese

A brand in themselves, Yokohama claim to be the 7th biggest manufacturer in the world.



Pirelli - Italy

Pirelli claim to be the 5th largest tyre manufacturer in the world. Most of its retail is through the Pirelli brand but have more recently released the Ceat and Courier brands.



Cooper Tyre - USA

Cooper recently bought the Avon brand. They now own Cooper, Avon and Mastercraft.



Continental - Germany

Owns Continental, Uniroyal (European market only!), General Tyre, Gislaved and Semperit.



Toyo - Japan

Toyo are one of the newer budget performance tyres to market. Formed many partnerships around the globe.



Kumho - Korea

Kumho is also a highly respected budget road tyre with a strong sporting range.



Apollo - India

Apollo now own Vredestein.



A couple of the holding companies are clients - I can confirm that within those companies, the budget brands are frequently manufactured in exactly the same factories, but with different rubber formulations and layer construction. The recipes are pretty complex, and have significant effect on the behaviour of the tyres. With that in mind, tyres with the same name but sold to different countries may very well NOT contain the same formulation, so a PZero manufactured for say Saudi, will not be made to the same spec as for say Norway.

 

[allandwf]

Very interesting. I personally buy the best I can in tyres as it's a very small contact point between the car and the road.

 

[zagatoes30]

Interesting some here I wasn't aware of but tyres are one of the few things I hate to compromise on so generally stick with the top end brands I have used before primarily Goodyear & Bridgestone although I have had some good experiences with Continental once they have bedded in.

 

[drewf]

One point - in some respects it doesn't matter who owns the brand as such... I'd be happy to put Vredesteins on a car for winter, but I'd never ever consider Apollo. In that respect, the subsidiary brand is a quality product, but the holding company doesn't have anything to offer me.

I'd echo the sentiments above - there are good reasons the big brands cost more; big savings can be made by using cheap ingredients in the rubber formulation, hence the really cheap ditch-finder tyres.

 

[conaero]

Interesting stuff Drew. Khumo are great standard road tyres was very impressed on the Alfa GT. Still be hard pushed to tear me away from Goodyear F1's on the Maserati.

The only tyre I don't really like is Pirelli, stems back to the dreadful experiances and over pricing on the GS 19's with cracking alloys and splitting sidewalls.

 

[StuartW]

Very interesting Drew.

As with Matt, I have good experiences with Kumho on my previous Fiat 500 but rather than stick to the same brand, I tend to go on recommendation depending on which car. Goodyear F1 for the 3200, Continental on the GTS and I will shortly be going Michelin SP on the Abarth 595

 

[daverichardson]

Did not Falken were part of Dunlop.

What about Lego? They are the largest tyre (as in numbers) manufacturer in the world - allegedly

 

[Sommi]

Great info.
I export Tyre Scrap of various types to India and one of the requests I get is whether I can send tyre scrap of a specific brand! I have to say no as there is no segregation process.
Except for Michelin who have a system in place retrieve end-of-life carcass back to their manufacturing units. We never see Michelin tyres in scrap.