Australia's Oldest Tyre Maker Introduces Its New Families
The Age
Wednesday May 17, 1995
AUSTRALIA'S most-bought passenger car tyre has been superseded. The Dunlop Monza D8, the original tyre on virtually every Australian-built car over the last six years, has been road-shouldered aside by the Monza 200.
It's one of three new tyre families unveiled yesterday by Australia's oldest tyre maker, including the first Australian-made, V- rated 60-Series performance tyre.
At the same time, the company has dropped the old 13-inch and 14- inch sizes from the Monza D8 range, which were made for cars like the Holden Kingswood and Torana.
The 60-series Monza 200 uses another first for Australia; it's called a ``jointless nylon band", a continuous strip of nylon without any joint for the tyre to roll over. This gives better load and weight distribution, as well as high-speed stability and lower noise levels.
The third new Dunlop is the Formula W1 Spec R, a high-performance tyre aimed at cars like the Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) range, BMW M3s and similar.
It will come in a wide range from 14-inch (the tyre industry has yet to adopt metrics for rim sizes) to the first 18-inch tyre Dunlop has sold in this country (albeit this one's imported).
The Formula W1 Spec R (this industry just loves letters and numbers) is actually rather new in that it uses kevlar as well as nylon in its jointless bands, which not only cuts down height but makes for a lighter tyre. Dunlop says Kevlar has 10 times the tensile strength of steel yet weighs about 30 per cent less.
High-performance tyres in the bigger sizes have been fairly much the province of the imports so far although European and Japanese cars are increasingly being criticised for bad reflected road noise.
The two major Australian tyre makers, Bridgestone and South Pacific Tyres (Dunlop-Olympic-Goodyear) produce about 12 different brands of tyres for passenger cars, four-wheel drives, light commercials and trucks six million tyres a year. But, about 35 different brands are imported, from the el cheapo rubbish to the super-glue jobs.
© 1995 The Age
