Goodyear’s competitors and technological turbulence in the tire industry
The Akron industrial cluster and the Akron-based tire MNEs retained their dominance
until the 1960s. However, they faced an unprecedented competitive shock in the
mid-1960s known as the “radial revolution” (Sull et al., 1997) from the French tire
company, Michelin. Radial tires had significantly improved performance. Sull (2001,
p. L5) reports that radial tires:
[…] reinforced the tire’s plies with steel wire, increased the tire’s useful life from 20,000 to
40,000 miles, reduced a driver’s gasoline consumption by 5-10 per cent, improved handling and
dramatically reduced the likelihood of a catastrophic tire failure, known as a “blowout”.