Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Where the Rubber Meets the Road: A Brief History of Tires" video.

  1. I well remember the Firestone radial tire fiasco of the late 70s. The steel belts on all four of my 500 series tires separated, but when I took the car into a Firestone dealership, they refused to warranty them, claiming my tires weren't part of the recalled lot. I stopped buying Firestones after that. Being a Ford family member, I continued to acquire their vehicles, but they always came factory equipped with Firestone tires. I'd swap them out with Michelins as soon as they wore down sufficiently. When the next round of faulty Firestone tires were recalled because of Explorer rollovers, our local Ford dealership did replace them for free, but they were out of Michelins, so I had to settle for Goodyears (or was it Goodrich, who can keep those two names straight?). That incident was the final straw for Ford, which severed its nearly century long relationship with Firestone. The final indignation for me came when I retired from the Air Force a few years later and tried to rent a U-Haul trailer. Because of the rollover issue, U-Haul refused to rent me anything, despite no longer having Firestone tires on my vehicle.
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