Road - Tyre talk

Did you know this is Pirelli’s 140th anniversary this year and in 2014 it will celebrate its 100th anniversary of opening a plant in Britain?

Giovanni Battista Pirelli founded Pirelli & C. in Milan in 1872 when he was twenty-four. A year later, he opened his first ‘rubber factory’ manufacturing insulated telegraph cable and underwater telegraph cable before making his first bicycle tyres in 1890. The first car tyre was produced in 1901.

Oh, and the first Pirelli calendar was produced in 1964. In those days the calendar and its models featured rather more on garage walls than in boardrooms, but the concept has changed over its 39 editions as it has moved away from being simply a ‘glamour’ calendar for tyre fitters to appreciate' to something that art connoisseurs will debate form, figure and function!