The Loaded Gun 1958 General Tire & Rubber Company; Frank Blair; Dual 90 Tires

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Advertising film for the General Dual 90 tire; VS 1950s cars on highways; great POV shots from inside car; great footage of tire durability tests with air pressure and exploding tires.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tire

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Continental Tire the Americas, LLC, d.b.a. General Tire, is an American manufacturer of tires for motor vehicles. Founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio by William F. O'Neil as The General Tire & Rubber Company (also referenced as The General Tire & Rubber Co.; commonly referred to as General Tire starting in the 1960s), the company later diversified (in 1984) into a conglomerate (GenCorp) with holdings in tires (General Tire), rubber compounds (DiversiTech General), rocketry and aeronautics (Aerojet), entertainment and news (RKO General), and real estate. The tire division was sold to Germany's Continental in 1987, becoming Continental Tire North America, before its re-incorporation again to its current name. The compounds division was spun off & became OMNOVA Solutions. The rocketry business was kept and expanded, and after a couple company name changes, the parent company is now Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings...

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 The General Tire & Rubber Company 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 & Rubber, 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

Growth

Despite the difficult business climate of World War I, in 1917, O'Neil established a dealership network and began an advertising campaign. By 1930, the company had 14 retail stores and about 1.8% of the tire market. During the depression, as competitors failed, The General Tire & Rubber Company bought out Yale Tire and Rubber, and India Tire and Rubber. By 1933, it had increased market share to 2.7%. This was a relatively large number, considering that the company limited its product line...

In the late 1930s, the United States Army became interested in rockets. A group of California Institute of Technology engineers won a contract to produce rocket engines to speed airplane liftoff, and formed a company named Aerojet. The group succeeded with liquid-fuel rockets, but needed additional materials science and manufacturing expertise to create more sophisticated solid-fuel rockets. Aerojet went into partnership with The General Tire & Rubber Company, using their capitalization, expertise with rubber binders, and chemical manufacturing facilities. The partnership was renamed Aerojet-General...

General Tire reorganized its holdings into the holding company GenCorp in 1984, with General Tire and RKO General as subsidiaries.

GenCorp sold General Tire to German tire maker Continental AG in 1987. General Tire still exists today as part of Continental's American operations...