Akron, Ohio Those who think a “tire will always be a tire” are in for a surprise.
I found that out during a three-day tour of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., considered the world’s largest, most advanced tiremaker.
Striking tire developments ahead include “run-flat” tires, elimination of the spare, debut of performance tires so wide they look as if they’re from a science fiction movie and use of tires as a part of a car’s suspension system.

Of course, tires appear much the same as always. They’re round.
Changes in cars have been obvious; they’ve gotten sleeker and more aerodynamic. But tire advances are barely perceptible because they don’t much alter a tire’s appearance.
However, cars are becoming so advanced they need tires much different in design and construction from those made even five years ago.

“It’s reached the point where General Motors designed its current Corvette and new Cadillac Allante sports cars in collaboration with Goodyear, which developed special tires exclusively for those autos,” said Robert Mercer, Goodyear’s chairman and chief executive officer.
Not long ago, automakers designed cars, then just installed the latest tires.
Akron is the world’s tire capital. Besides Goodyear, all the major U.S. tiremakers are headquartered here – Firestone, Uniroyal-Goodrich and General Tire.

All are near each other. To reach them, one drives up Market Street past the bizarre Tangier Restaurant and Art Deco exterior of the Diamond Grille restaurant, nationally known for steaks, to the revitalized but still languid downtown Akron area.
Then one cranks the steering wheel one way or the other, and within minutes is at one of the tire company headquarters.

Goodyear’s headquarters are the most imposing, as is its nearby Akron test track and Technical Center.
The Tech Center is a revamped old brick tire plant. It’s been converted under the direction of Fred Kovac, Goodyear’s vice president-tire technology, to a computer-filled facility that has artificial noise pumped in.
“Without that noise, it’s literally too quiet in here to work,” said Kovac, pointing to modern art that fills the building’s halls.
Kovac emphasized the art is from Midwestern artists. “There’s no need to buy it elsewhere,” he said.

Like GM and Ford, Goodyear always has been a solid Midwest-based company.
Kovac is an avid art lover, but it was clear he’s most fascinated by modern technology as it applies to building advanced tires.
“Tire design work, once a `black art’ done by trial and error, now is performed with computers,” he said. “We can engineer, build and test tires on computers … simulate what will happen to them without putting them on a road. Prototype tires are made only for final verification on the road.”

Few tires are made in Akron. Thousands of Southern men once boarded buses for Akron to work in Goodyear tire building plants. Goodyear even built comfortable homes for them in a hilly area overlooking company headquarters.
Most Goodyear tires now are made in the South and in countries throughout the world.
Akron is clean, and no longer smells from tire construction. The area is full of money from tire executives, although tiremakers, like U.S. companies in other fields, are slashing operations to remain world competitive.

Goodyear remains the most powerful tiremaker, despite a recent emotionally charged and costly fight with Sir James Goldsmith, a foreign corporate raider who wanted to buy the company. Tire experts say Goldsmith probably would have crippled it by selling key subsidiaries.
Because of the takeover attempt, Goodyear has been forced to cut its size 12 percent and undergo drastic restructuring. It had to sell its profitable aerospace, auto wheel manufacturing and oil industry divisions, and it has instituted internal cost cutbacks.
“It might take three years to recover,” the 63-year-old Mercer said in his thickly carpeted, wood-paneled office that looks as one might expect an old-line Akron tire executive’s office to look.

“We intend to stay tire leader, although we’re cutting research and development expenditures to concentrate on projects that’ll impact the market within a short time frame,” Mercer said.
`As we return to more normal operations, we expect to renew longer research and development to maintain our competitive edge up to 10 years from now.”
Goodyear’s fight with Goldsmith wasn’t much noticed outside the financial pages. But it was considered a life-death struggle in Akron, where Goodyear has been king since founded here in 1898.
Its battle won, Goodyear remains the General Motors of the tire business and plans lots of tire surprises for motorists.
Thursday: Mercer’s Corvettes, Ferrari’s Goodyear tires and racing’s heavy influence on regular auto tires.