François Michelin led the eponymous family business for almost half a century and helped establish it as one of the world’s “Big Three” tyre manufacturers, reports FRANCE 24.
Michelin, whose death was announced in a statement on Wednesday, was the grandson of Edouard Michelin, Michelin & Cie’s founder in 1889. The secretive family business is still based in Clermont-Ferrand, in the remote Auvergne region of central France.
It owns the city’s cherished rugby club, ASM Clermont Auvergne, and also publishes the world-famous restaurant and hotel guides.
Throughout his 47 years at the company’s helm, François Michelin seldom gave interviews to the press – making an exception only for Clermont-Ferrand’s local newspaper, La Montagne. But his ambitions for the family firm reached well beyond the Auvergne’s rugged landscape.
His tenure from 1955 to 2002 coincided with the tire maker’s rapid global expansion, propelled by the success of its radial tire, known as the Michelin X.
“By developing the radial tyre, he transformed a family and regional company into one of the biggest French groups and one of its best-known," said French President François Hollande, hailing Michelin as “one of the greatest French industrialists of the postwar years”.