Clermont-Ferrand

"This work of preparation for constantly different tasks can only be done in the motherland. Clermont-Ferrand is the place where “in a perpetual work of training, the common know-how” of engineers, technicians, workers, salespeople, managers is forged. In the capital of Auvergne exclusively, far from the Parisian viruses that could contaminate it. “The day the House leaves its walls, it will lose its soul,” says François Michelin. And the basic training—the famous Michelin “internship”—which targets sharp minds and strong characters more than well-filled heads, consists of addressing a concrete problem. “Engineers who enter the factory are assigned to address questions whose solutions are not found in books or speculative reflections, but in the field. They must go and find them there, and for that, know how to look, listen, spot a detail, cross-check information, ask questions that allow going further, change perspectives, and reduce the problem to a set of well-established facts upon which one can finally reason and build. And if reasoning leaves room for several solutions, it is ultimately experience that will decide.”"

"SINCE the arrival of the socialists in power in France, Michelin has become even more secretive. Roger Quillot, the senator-mayor of Clermont-Ferrand, is at the Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing. Pierre Dreyfus, the former president of Renault — Citroën’s former enemy — is at the Ministry of Industry on Rue de Grenelle. The communist Charles Fiterman, Minister of Transport, intends to favor the SNCF at the expense of road transport. The Communist Party demands to include Michelin on the next list of nationalizable companies. François Michelin, who apparently had little affinity with previous Elysée teams, now resides on his lands, erecting new walls. Last June, before his shareholders, he once again expressed concern about “the gap that often exists between industrial and economic reality and the perception that political circles have of it.” Once again, he went to war against “the scarcity of savings and especially the abusive use of credit, not for the creation of means of production but for financing that is not a source of wealth, such as state deficits, consumer credits, excessive working capital of companies.”"