Michelin Gets the Credit for Radial Tires, But This Inventor Beat Them by 30 Years

The story of the radial tire is usually told as a French triumph, with Michelin at the center of the narrative. The French giant did indeed perfect and commercialize the radial design in the late 1940s, but the concept itself was not Michelin’s brainchild. That distinction belongs to Arthur Savage, a Jamaican-born British inventor and entrepreneur who filed a patent for a radial car tire in 1915—three decades before Michelin’s 1946 filing. Savage’s San Diego-based Savage Tire Company produced the first puncture-proof pneumatic tires for cars and even inner tubes, employing up to 2,000 workers at its peak. The company’s sprawling factory in San Diego was later converted into a brewery by 1934.

Savage’s career was nothing short of eclectic. Before turning 35, he had already made his mark in the Australian cattle industry, designed torpedoes, invented a rifle, and founded the Savage Repeating Arms Company in Utica, New York, which produced the highly regarded Model 1899 hunting rifle and supplied firearms to the British military during World War II. By 1905, Savage sold his firearms business, moved to California to grow oranges, and later relocated to San Diego, where he patented the radial tire in 1915 (the patent was granted in 1916). He sold the tire company in 1919 to pursue other ventures, including a failed firearms venture with his son, oil drilling, and ceramics production, before succumbing to terminal cancer in 1938. Savage took his own life at 81.

Michelin, however, is the name most closely associated with radial tires today. The company filed its first radial tire patent in 1946 and refined the concept into the Michelin X radial, a design that offered superior strength, comfort, wet grip, and fuel efficiency compared to bias-ply tires. The breakthrough was validated in 1951 when Lancia debuted the Aurelia B20 as the first production car to leave the factory with standard Michelin radial tires. That same year, a Lancia Aurelia B20 equipped with Michelin radials won the 2.0-liter class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished 12th overall. Michelin continued to expand its radial technology, patenting radial truck tires in 1952 and industrial tires in 1959.

Today, Michelin dominates the global tire market, owning brands such as BFGoodrich, Corsa, and Achilles. The irony? American tiremakers were slow to adopt radial technology. In the 1970s, over 98% of tires produced in the U.S. were bias-ply or belted bias-ply, while France and Italy had already shifted to 97% and 80% radial tires, respectively. The delay stemmed from automakers’ reluctance to redesign suspension systems to accommodate radial tires, despite their clear advantages in performance and longevity.