august 2000

Michelin invented the radial tyre just over half a century ago and introduced the Michelin X tyre in 1946. Lancia was the first OEM customer for this new generation of tyres. The Michelin X was good for speeds up to 180 km/h. A few years later the Michelin XAS tyre was introduced for speeds up to 210 km/h. The "AS" stands for "asymetrical". It had less thread at the outside and more on the inside. The idea was to also improve cornering (which did work!). Both were beautiful tyres combining exellent stability, handling and long life.

The diagonal tyre was the precessor of the radial tyre. It remained in use till far into the sixties on low performance cars. My first car (an old FIAT 1100 bought in 1966, front doors were the suicide type) still had diagonal tyres, which I left on. After a few months the front suspension collapsed on the cobblestones of the Marconi Square in Rotterdam. I then bought a later model FIAT 1100, where I had the diagonal tyres replaced by Michelin ZX, the brand new successor of the Michelin X. It improved road holding considerably but also turned it into a dangerous car as the suspension, steering etc of the FIAT 1100 was not able to handle radial tyres very well. One was easily lured into driving too fast due to the sense of safety that the ZX tyres gave. However, once the car started to skid, all its shortcomings (one of them a heck of a lot of oversteer) instantly became clear in a much more severe way than when skidding at a lower speed. I did crash the car after a few months by rolling it over 2 and a half times in an sudden 90° turn on a country road in the middle of the night.

Michelin ruled the world of radial tyres in those years. Pirelli tried with the Cinturato, which was worse than bad. There were Kleber - Colombe and Englebert (both reasonable), Dunlop (I was not impressed) and several others who tried. None was a match for Michelin, at least on Lancia's.