40 Fun Facts About Tires

Which toy company holds the Guinness World Record for producing the most tires each year?

Lego produced over 318 million toy tires in 2011, more than any car-tire maker manages by count.

John Boyd Dunlop, the Scot who made the first practical air-filled tire, earned his living in which profession?

Veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop ran one of Ireland's largest animal practices in Belfast when he turned to tires. He retired from it in 1892 as his invention took off.

The 80-foot Uniroyal Giant Tire beside a Michigan highway began as which ride at the 1964 New York World's Fair?

The Ferris wheel was dismantled after the fair, hauled to Michigan on 22 trucks and rebuilt without its gondolas beside Interstate 94.

Which powder, mixed into tire rubber as a reinforcing filler, gives modern tires their dark colour?

Carbon black also carries heat away from the tread and belts, and about 70% of the world's supply goes into tires.

In the American penny test for worn tire tread, which president's head should stay partly hidden in the groove?

Abraham Lincoln goes in upside down: if the top of his head shows, the tread is down to about 2/32 of an inch and the tire needs replacing.

The French tire maker Michelin awards which symbols to top restaurants in a guide first published in 1900?

Stars were added in 1926 to a guide the Michelin brothers launched to get French motorists driving more and so buying more tires.

A tire shredded by a metal strip on a Paris runway triggered the fatal July 2000 crash of which airliner?

Concorde ran over a titanium strip dropped by another jet, and flying tire fragments ruptured a fuel tank in its wing. The whole fleet was grounded afterwards.

The Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle drove across the Moon on tires made from which material instead of rubber?

Woven steel wire formed each springy tire, with titanium chevrons covering half the contact area for grip in the lunar dust.

In a tire size such as P215/65R15 printed on a sidewall, what does the letter R stand for?

Radial means the cords run straight across the tire from bead to bead, a construction Michelin developed in 1946 that almost every car tire now uses.

Which super-strong fibre did DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek invent while seeking a lighter material for tires?

Kevlar first went on sale in the early 1970s inside racing tires, and now turns up in bicycle tires, racing sails and bulletproof vests.

Which process, discovered by Charles Goodyear in 1839, heats rubber with sulfur to make it tough enough for tires?

Vulcanization is named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, and Goodyear found it by combining the two ingredients over a hot stove.

Goodyear, Firestone and General Tire all grew up in which Ohio city, nicknamed the Rubber Capital of the World?

Akron is still Goodyear's home, although the company's first factory there, opened in 1898, was converted into a research centre in 1978.

Michelin's mascot, a figure built from stacked white tires, is officially known by which Latin-derived name?

Bibendum comes from a Latin toast about it being time to drink, lifted from a rejected beer poster and first used for Michelin in 1898.

Which term describes a car's tires riding up on a layer of standing water and losing all grip on the road?

Hydroplaning, also called aquaplaning, leaves a driver unable to steer or brake, which is why tread grooves are shaped to channel water away.

American drivers give which bakery nickname to the small temporary spare tire found in many car trunks?

Donut spares save weight and trunk space, but they are built only for short trips at up to about 50 mph.

Which tire maker first published its glamorous trade calendar, shot by famous photographers, in 1964?

Pirelli launched it through its UK subsidiary, and in 1972 Sarah Moon became the first woman to photograph it.

Which animated TV town is home to a tire fire that has been burning continuously for decades?

Springfield, the home of The Simpsons, counts the largest self-sustaining tire fire in its state among its landmarks.

In Pixar's Cars, which Fiat 500 runs the Casa Della Tires shop in Radiator Springs?

Luigi displays his stock in a Leaning Tower of Tires outside the shop, modelled on the famous tower in Pisa.

Airliner tires are usually filled with which dry gas to limit pressure swings between runway and high altitude?

Nitrogen is also required on some airliners because oxygen inside severely overheated tires has reacted with fumes and exploded in at least three cases.

Which tire valve, patented in 1893 and named after its German-American inventor, is used on virtually every car?

August Schrader built the valve with his son George in 1891, after hearing of English cyclists' success on air-filled tires.

Only six cars started the 2005 United States Grand Prix after Michelin tires failed at which American speedway?

Indianapolis saw 14 cars pull into the pits after the formation lap, because their tires were judged safe for only ten laps at full speed through Turn 13.

Which treadless tires, first produced for 1950s drag racing, give racing cars the most grip on a dry track?

Slicks have no grooves, so the largest possible patch of rubber touches the track; M&H Tires made the first production set.

John Boyd Dunlop made his first air-filled tires in 1887 for which vehicle belonging to his son?

Tricycle parts gave Dunlop his test: he rolled his air-filled wheel across his Belfast yard beside a metal wheel taken from it.

The word tire, first used for the iron rim of a carriage wheel, is probably a shortened form of which older word?

Attire is the likely root: a wheel fitted with its iron band was thought of as a dressed wheel.

The tree that supplies most natural tire rubber is now planted across the tropics but is native to which region?

Amazon Basin forests are the original home of Hevea brasiliensis, a tree whose Latin name still points to Brazil.

Which milky fluid is tapped from the bark of rubber trees as the raw material for natural tire rubber?

Latex oozes from vessels in the inner bark when it is cut, and tapping slows growth so much that plantation trees stay smaller than wild ones.

A dashboard warning light showing an exclamation mark inside a tire's cross-section warns of which problem?

Underinflation sets off the light, part of a monitoring system US law required after a wave of deadly tire failures in the late 1990s.

American tire pressures are quoted in psi, an abbreviation that stands for which unit of measurement?

Pounds per square inch is used mainly in the United States; one psi equals roughly 6.9 kilopascals in metric terms.

Which type of tire has stiff sidewalls that let a car keep driving about 50 miles after a puncture?

Run-flat tires let carmakers leave out the spare, though they weigh 20 to 40 percent more than standard ones.

Tread separation on Firestone tires in the late 1990s was linked to deadly rollovers of which Ford SUV?

Explorer crashes tied to the failures killed more than 200 people in the United States, and an insurance researcher's tally of 21 wrecks first alerted regulators.

A bicycle tire announced in 2019 was the first made with natural rubber from which common yellow-flowered weed?

Dandelion roots of a Central Asian species can be harvested after a single growing season, while a rubber tree takes several years to yield its first latex.

The last four digits of the DOT code on a tire's sidewall, such as 0422, record which fact about the tire?

Manufacture date is coded as a week and a year, so 0422 marks a tire built in the fourth week of 2022.

The marking M+S, moulded into the sidewall of many all-season tires, stands for which pair of conditions?

Mud and snow is the meaning, and the mark shows a tire meets the all-season definition set by the US and Canadian rubber industry associations.

Goodyear has advertised its tires since 1925 with a fleet of which aircraft, often seen above sports events?

Blimps began with the Pilgrim in 1925, and the fleet now doubles as a camera platform for television coverage of live games.

Hankook, a tire maker founded in 1941 as the Chosun Tire Company, is headquartered in which country?

South Korea is written into the brand: Hankook is the Korean word for Korea, and its earlier title Chosun is an older name for the country.

Which name is given to the thin slits in a tire's tread blocks, after the American who patented the idea in 1923?

Sipes take their name from John F. Sipe, who in one telling cut slits in his shoe soles to stop slipping on a wet slaughterhouse floor.

Which white compound made early car tires pale before a darker filler replaced it in the tread?

Zinc oxide improved traction but wore out too quickly, and all-dark tires were at first the premium choice, fitted to luxury cars into the 1930s.

Which Scottish inventor patented an air-filled tire in the 1840s, decades before John Boyd Dunlop revived the idea?

Robert Thomson called his invention Aerial Wheels and showed them on horse-drawn carriages in a London park in 1847. He also invented a refillable fountain pen.

A spare tire is still called a stepney in India and Malta, after a street in which Welsh town?

Llanelli brothers Walter and Tom Davies invented the spare there in 1904 and named their company after their workshop on Stepney Street.

Which tire maker, among the world's largest, was founded in the German city of Hanover in 1871?

Continental started out as the Continental-Caoutchouc und Gutta-Percha Compagnie, a maker of rubber goods, and still has its headquarters in Hanover.