Dunlop celebrated 125 years in business last week with an invited group of tyre retailers at Mondello Park, Naas, Co. Kildare.
Pictured from L-R: Stephen Jackson, Mileage Tyres; Derek Carroll, Bluebell Tyres; Leo Reilly, Goodyear Dunlop; Kevin Burke, Kevin Burke Tyres; Michael Rochford, Totum Parts; Kevin Farrell, Square Fit; Thomas Heffernan, Heffernan Tyres; Brendan Byrnes, Byrnes Oranmore and Rory Byrne, Modern Tyres
The assembled group heard that the leading performance tyre brand on its 125th birthday, will not only look back at its heritage in racing and on the road, but spend the year looking forward at what it wants to achieve in the next 125 years.
John Boyd Dunlop, a veterinarian surgeon in Belfast, began the Dunlop story when he took it upon himself to make his son’s tricycle a more comfortable ride.
Richard Warbrick, Goodyear Dunlop Ireland Managing Director, explained: “John Boyd Dunlop was determined to make a tyre that would overcome vibration and be fast on all surfaces. His creativity and perseverance enabled him to develop a prototype tyre for his son’s tricycle made from canvas bonded together with liquid rubber.
“The performance was so impressive he immediately patented the idea and within a year had opened the world’s first pneumatic tyre factory in Dublin’s Stephens Street. And so the Dunlop story began.”
In 1889 the Dunlop pneumatic tyres were put to the test and made their racing debut with a little-known bicycle rider called William Hume.
Warbrick continues: “The story goes that onlookers at the race did not mince their words, calling Hume’s tyres “sausages”. Nevertheless, Hume went on to win four races with ease, totally untroubled by much better-known riders who were racing on solid tyres. The success of the invention became world news, acknowledging the superiority of the pneumatic tyres.”
Check in our extensive review of Dunlop’s 125 celebrations at Mondello in the next edition of the Tyre Trade Journal.
