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A tire company founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio and sold to Continental in 1987.

History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's General Tire page on 17 November 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The General Tire and Rubber Company is an American manufacturer of tires for motor vehicles.

General Tire was founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio, by William F. O'Neil. The company later diversified into a conglomerate with holdings in tires, rubber compounds, rocketry and aeronautics, entertainment and news, and real estate.

The tire and rubber division was sold to Germany's Continental in 1987, and is now known as Continental Tire North America, Inc. The rocketry business was kept and expanded and after a couple company name changes, the parent company is now Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings.

Formation

William O'Neil had a Firestone franchise in Kansas City. He started a small manufacturing facility for tire repair products, and called it Western Tire and Rubber.

As Firestone grew, it sold additional franchises, reducing the territories of its earlier franchisees. Dissatisfied, O'Neil decided to compete with Firestone instead, using the expertise he had gained with Western. He went into partnership with his father, a department store owner in Akron, and formed General Tire in 1915 using $200,000 in capital borrowed from the store. The O'Neils hired away some Firestone managers.

Initially, they focused on repair materials, as with Western Tire, but in 1916 they expanded into tire manufacturing, focusing on high-end products. Early products included:
General Jumbo, a premium replacement for Ford Model T trucks
Low-pressure General Balloon Jumbo
Dual 90 tires

Multimedia

1950's
This film is available courtesy of the Prelinger Archives (public domain).
Download [General Tire Commercial] from The Internet Archive - 10.5MB - 0:51

Date	Media or Collection Name & Details	Files
1949	How to Avoid an Accident Wilding Picture Productions for General Tire	Topic Page - 248MB - 9:14
1958	The Loaded Gun The Jam Handy Organization for General Tire & Rubber Co.	Topic Page - 191MB - 8:13

Date	Article	Author/Source
15 March 1994	General Tire, Inc.; Grant of Petition for Determination of Inconsequential Noncompliance	Federal Register: NHTSA (Barry Felrice)
6 July 1994	General Tire, Inc., Mayfield, KY; Affirmative Determination Regarding Application for Reconsideration	Federal Register: DoL (Stephen A. Wandner)