Avon is looking forward to another season of motorsport, opening on Easter weekend as the title sponsor of the British GT Championship. The brand is the title sponsor and sole tyre supplier of the prestigious Championship for the fifth consecutive season, with cars built by manufacturers such as Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lotus and Porsche set to line up on the grid this year.
Cooper Tire & Rubber has announced a quarterly dividend of 10.5 cents per share on common stock, payable March 31, 2010, to stockholders of record at the close of business March 2, 2010. This will mark the 152nd consecutive quarterly dividend paid by Cooper Tire & Rubber Company.
The Morgan Motor Company has achieved a new record for output in 2009, with the total cars built expected to total around 690 – a 73 per cent increase on the company’s usual figure of 400, according to reports in Autocar. The car-maker’s tyre supplier, Cooper Tire Europe, which supplied Avon ZZ3s for the Aero 8 and Aeromax models, declared itself “extremely proud” of its long association with Morgan.
Following a year on the world’s racetracks in which more than 120 champions were crowned using its motorsport products, Avon Tyres Motorsport of Melksham, Wiltshire in the UK is to participate in a variety of competitive motorsport championships in categories as diverse as rallycross, hillclimb, sprints and historic racing in 2010. Perhaps most prominently, the division of Cooper Tire will continue its title sponsorship of the British GT Championship.
Continental Tire North America calls it a “new era in motorsports” – on January 29, the Grand-Am Continental Tires Sports Car Challenge took the first green flag of the year at Daytona International Speedway, setting into motion both the 2010 Grand-Am racing season as well as a new long-term partnership between Conti and Grand-Am Road Racing in the US. Continental Tire recently became title sponsor and official tyre for the popular endurance road-racing series, which attracted nearly 80 entries for January 28’s ‘Fresh From Florida 200’ event. A tremendous variety of race machines, from Mini Cooper S to Ford Mustang, took to the field, yet despite the size difference all share the same type of tyre, the Continental Extreme Contact DR.
Curt Andersson has been named president of Goodyear’s North American Tire unit, a position that has been “open” since current NAT president Rich Kramer was promoted to COO of the global company last year. Andersson, 48, comes to Goodyear from Crouse-Hinds of Syracuse, New York, were he served as president of the Cooper Industries unit. Prior to Crouse-Hinds, Andersson was senior vice president of industrial integration for The Timken Co. in Canton, Ohio, and held management posts with General Electric.
All Terrain Tours, an off-road tour company (as the name suggests) has chosen Cooper’s Discoverer STT tyres for use in the Northern English countryside. Started earlier this year by Tony Newton and Mark Langley, All Terrain Tours allows owners of off-road vehicles to use them away from asphalt roads on legally accessible “green lanes”, with prices starting at around £45. Langley’s Land Rover Defender and Newton’s Land Rover Discovery will have the Cooper tyres fitted as they lead tours across some of England’s most remote and beautiful countryside. The company promotes safe and responsible use of four-wheel drive vehicles in the countryside, with routes available for most 4x4s.
Cooper Tire has joined the ranks of generous tyre companies donating money to the Haiti relief fund. The company announced today that it is pledging up to $25,000 in donations to support relief and recovery efforts in Haiti after the 12 January, 2010 earthquake, which caused catastrophic damage and tremendous loss of life. The Company will match up to $25,000 in employee donations through a special Haiti disaster-relief matching gift programme.
The Toyota Cooper Tire team claimed second place in the T2 production car class at this year’s Dakar Rally. Dakar veteran driver Xavier Foj and co-driver Pablo Jaton overcame a faulty ECU unit; a day spent digging themselves out of the sand dunes; and an encounter with a massive rock in a river, which almost destroyed their car’s rear differential, to finish on the podium at the rally’s conclusion.
After an exciting ACU British Short Track Championship season, which saw Pete Boast take the victor’s spoils, some of motorcycle racing’s most famous names headed to Essex for the final event of 2009, the Braintree Bonanza on 27 December. Manufacturer Maxxis began its association with Short Track UK four years ago when Triple A Racing, the Manchester-based Maxxis tyre distributor, supplied tyres to a number of competitors. In 2009 all riders used the Maxxis DTR-1 flat track tyre, thanks to an agreement between the organisers and Triple A Racing, who jointly sponsored the series.
In the US, RMA members reported that replacement tyre demand grew 9.3 per cent year-on-year in December 2009, from a drop of -16.0 per cent the year before. Financial analysts pointed out that the overall market volume grew 6.1 per cent, implying that domestic tyre manufacturers (namely Cooper Tire and Goodyear) continued to experience market share gains. The is believed to be a result of last year’s Chinese-made tyre tariffs as Chinese produced tyres reportedly occupied 16.6 per cent of the US market in 2008.
Staff at Cooper Tire’s UK headquarters in Melksham raised more than £4,000 for the Help for Heroes charity last month with a festive raffle. The raffle, organised by HR officer Steve Forbes and Unite representative Steve Saunders, took place on 23 December and raised £2,052.03 for the forces charity. That amount was matched by Cooper Tire & Rubber Company Europe, to bring the total to £4,104.06.
The Toyota Cooper Tire team of Xavier Foj and co-driver, Pablo Jaton, is holding a podium position in the Dakar Rally as the legendary event enters its second half. The 32nd running of the Dakar, famed for being the toughest off-road challenge in the world, started on New Year’s Day and will come to a close on January 17, having covered thousands of kilometres through Argentina and Chile. Spanish Dakar veteran, Foj, and his Argentine co-driver are racing a Toyota Land Cruiser KXR, shod with Cooper’s rugged Discoverer STT rubber.
Cooper Tire’s new ERP, or Enterprise Planning Resource, system is intended to standardise, automate and integrate the company’s data and processes into one system and provide access to information in a real-time environment. To assist in the successful roll out of this system, Cooper has appointed Ron Ranallo to the newly created position of vice president, ERP implementation. In this new role, Ranallo will supervise numerous business process owners who are tasked with designing and configuring the enterprise resource planning business processes and enabling software.
In late December Cooper Tire & Rubber announced the appointment of Brenda S. Harmon to the position of senior vice president, Global Human Resources and Communications. In her new role, Harmon is leading all human resource and employee relations activities for the company.
If you would like the latest news from the Chinese tyre industry in Chinese, visit our partner site TyrepressChina.com. Or click below to continue on Tyrepress.
