Michelin
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50 free Michelin trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Michelin is two famous things at once: one of the world's biggest tire makers and the name behind the most feared restaurant ratings on earth. The link between them is one of the best stories in business, and it starts with two brothers in provincial France at the end of the nineteenth century. This quiz covers both halves. There are questions on the company's early days, its inventions, its mascot and its long record in motor racing, alongside questions on the guide: how the stars work, what the other symbols mean, the inspectors, and the chefs who won, lost or handed back the top rating. It is written for food lovers, car people, pub-quiz teams and anyone who has ever wondered why a tire company decides where the world eats. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first Michelin Guide was handed out free in 1900 to encourage which group to travel more?
Motorists
Motorists were the target: the Michelin brothers reckoned that more driving meant more worn tires to replace. France had fewer than 3,000 cars on its roads at the time.
Q 02What is the official name of the Michelin Man, the mascot built from a stack of tires?
Bibendum
Bibendum comes from a Latin toast about it being time to drink, which appeared on his first poster in 1898. He is one of the oldest trademarks still in use anywhere.
Q 03Which substance, added to rubber from 1912, turned tires black while the Michelin Man stayed pale?
Carbon
Carbon made tires tougher and longer-lasting, and black. Before that they were a pale grey-white, which is why a mascot first drawn in 1898 is the colour he is.
Q 04Which French city has been Michelin's home since the brothers took over a struggling rubber firm there in the 1880s?
Clermont-Ferrand
Clermont-Ferrand still houses Michelin's headquarters and its museum. The yellow and blue worn by the city's biggest sports club are the company's colours.
Q 05In the Michelin Guide's classic definitions, a three-star restaurant serves food said to be worth what?
A special journey
A special journey is the three-star promise, while two stars merit a detour. The wording dates from the 1930s, when the guide still existed to keep drivers out on the road.
Q 06Which French carmaker did Michelin rescue from bankruptcy in the 1930s and control for some forty years?
Citroën
Citroën passed to Michelin, its biggest creditor, when it went bust in 1934. Under tire-company ownership it launched the 2CV, before being sold to Peugeot in the 1970s.
Q 07Which city's first Michelin Guide, published in 2007, awarded about twice as many stars as Paris held?
Tokyo
Tokyo collected 191 stars in that debut edition. One explanation offered was sheer numbers: the Japanese capital has about four times as many restaurants as Paris.
Q 08In which Asian city did a hawker stall selling soy sauce chicken win a Michelin star in 2016?
Singapore
Singapore got its first Michelin Guide that year, and two street stalls made the starred list. Queues at the chicken stall stretched to two hours after the announcement.
Q 09Which British chef, the first from his country to win three Michelin stars, handed them all back in 1999?
Marco Pierre White
Marco Pierre White walked away from the kitchen, saying the pressure of keeping the stars had made the work monotonous. At 33 he had been the youngest chef yet to reach three.
Q 10Which food is the specialty of Sukiyabashi Jiro, the ten-seat Japanese counter that once held three Michelin stars?
Sushi
Sushi made Jiro Ono's counter famous worldwide, helped by a 2011 documentary about him. Michelin dropped it in 2019 because the general public could no longer book a seat.
Q 11The Michelin Man was adapted from a rejected poster that its illustrator had drawn for what kind of business?
A brewery
A brewery in Munich had turned the drawing down: a stout, regal figure hoisting an enormous beer. André Michelin suggested swapping the drinker for a man made of tires.
Q 12The Michelin Man's name comes from a Latin toast about drinking written by which Roman poet?
Horace
Horace wrote the line in his Odes some 1,900 years before a French tire poster borrowed it. The phrase was already on the drawing that Michelin reworked into its mascot.
Q 13In the 1898 poster that introduced him, the Michelin Man toasts rival tires with a goblet holding what?
Nails and broken glass
Q 21Michelin tires were on the winning car at the first running of which French endurance race, in 1923?
Le Mans 24 Hours
Le Mans 24 Hours began with Michelin rubber on the winner and on nine other cars in the 33-strong field. By 2009 the company was supplying 41 of the 55 entrants.
Q 22Which American tire brand, founded in Akron, Ohio, in 1870, was bought by Michelin along with Uniroyal?
BFGoodrich
BFGoodrich began by making rubberised hoses, sold mostly to fire brigades, before it ever made tires. Its tire business passed to the French company around 1990.
Q 23Michelin North America has been headquartered since the 1980s in which South Carolina city?
Greenville
Nails and broken glass filled the goblet, to show that a Michelin tire could swallow whatever the road threw at it. Scrawny rival tires look on from either side.
Q 14In English editions of which comic series does the Michelin Man cameo as a wheel dealer in Switzerland?
Asterix
Asterix in Switzerland gives him the walk-on part in several translations. The original French album used the mascot of a petrol-station chain instead.
Q 15Which British designer helped convert London's Michelin House into shops, offices and a restaurant in 1987?
Terence Conran
Terence Conran and publisher Paul Hamlyn redeveloped the 1911 building together. Michelin had opened it as a British headquarters where drivers could pull in to have tires fitted.
Q 16Which tire design, patented by Michelin in 1946 and first sold as the X, became the global standard?
Radial
Radial tires gripped better and saved fuel, and the idea came from a former accountant on Michelin's research staff. American makers held out against them for another two decades.
Q 17What is the main selling point of the Tweel, Michelin's combined tire and wheel with flexible plastic spokes?
It needs no air
It needs no air, so it can never go flat or burst. The spokes flex to soak up bumps, doing the job that pressure does inside an ordinary tire.
Q 18Michelin's first breakthrough was a pneumatic tire, patented in 1891, that came off for quick repair on which vehicles?
Bicycles
Bicycles came first: a rider with a puncture had turned up at the factory, and his glued-on tire took hours to fix. Michelin's detachable version went on to win a 1,200 km race.
Q 19The Micheline of the 1930s put Michelin's rubber tires on which kind of vehicle?
Trains
Trains called Michelines gave a remarkably smooth ride on French railways, but each car needed up to 20 tires and could suffer flats. The idea lived on in rubber-tired metros.
Q 20Safety fears over Michelin tires left only six cars racing in a 2005 Formula One Grand Prix at which circuit?
Indianapolis
Indianapolis saw 14 cars peel into the pits after the warm-up lap, their tires judged unsafe at full speed through Turn 13. Fans who sat through it were later offered free tickets.
Greenville got a Michelin tire plant in 1975, and the North American head office followed about ten years later.
Q 24Which NASA vehicle landed on Michelin tires supplied by a factory in Norwood, North Carolina?
Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle tires came with the Norwood plant when Michelin bought an American rival's tire business in 1989, adding spacecraft to a range running from motorcycles to earthmovers.
Q 25Which supercar ran on purpose-built Michelin run-flat tires that cost about $25,000 a set?
Bugatti Veyron
Bugatti Veyron tires had to cope with speeds beyond 250 mph, and could be fitted to the wheels only in France, a service that cost $70,000.
Q 26Which sport is played by the French club founded in 1911 as AS Michelin for the tire company's workers?
Rugby
Rugby has been the club's game since Marcel Michelin, son of co-founder André, set it up. The team still plays at a stadium that bears his name.
Q 27Before he joined his brother to save the family rubber business, Édouard Michelin seemed destined for which career?
Artist
Artist was the plan until the failing firm called him home. He went on to run Michelin for half a century, with a string of firsts in wheel and tire design to his name.
Q 28The struggling firm the Michelin brothers took over in the 1880s made rubber parts mainly for what?
Farm machinery
Farm machinery needed its valves and gaskets, and the firm also sold rubber balls and brake pads. Tires came only after a stranded rider wheeled a puncture into the yard.
Q 29What colour is the cover of the Michelin restaurant guide, a shade that gave the book its nickname?
Red
Red was already the cover colour of the first free edition in 1900, and the book is often simply called the Red Guide.
Q 30Michelin's Green Guides also award up to three stars, but to what instead of restaurants?
Tourist sights
Tourist sights get the stars in the Green Guides, which cover countries, regions and cities far beyond France and come in several languages.