Number one is not good enough for tyre maker Bridgestone. It sells more tyres globally than anyone else in the world, but Europe has so far proved an uncrackable nut. There’s a renewed sense of purpose within the firm’s top brass, so Matt Kimberley went to Tokyo to explore the future.

Japan is where the four-wheeled future is born. This is the nation that saw the potential in hybrid technology before anyone else, after all, and it’s the nation that has a better handle on hydrogen power than anyone. It’s also at the very cutting edge of the black, round things that cars can’t get very far without.

The country is a bizarre and electrifying mix of the old and the new; Buddhist temples anachronistic against neon skyscrapers and an eye-popping cartoon culture that has all but defined every generation of Japanese youngsters since the 1990s. Tradition and technological innovation exist side by side in a towering cultural equilibrium that underpins everything Japan stands for.

This balance extends right to the top floor of even the biggest businesses in Japan, and in one of those boardrooms there’s a wind of change blowing. As it turns out, the Japanese way only gets you so far – at least when it comes to car tyres.

Bridgestone wants to achieve dan-totsu, the Japanese word meaning ‘ultimate number one’, or ‘by far the best’, and it wants to achieve it in every market for every tyre it sells. Talk about targets.

British Bikers already know all about Bridgestone: the brand whose first motorbike tyres in the 1970s were so bad that journalists of the day urged a swap as soon as the bike that wore them left the showroom. Fast-forward a few decades and Bridgestone leads the UK market. Dan-totsu. Its tyres are superb.

But the engineering superiority that bikers buy into has actually cost Bridgestone ground in the European car market. In a simply-furnished briefing room set up in Bridgestone’s Tokyo HQ, overlooking the sprawling city, infamously tight-lipped Japanese executives try not to say anything that could seem negative, but a more media-savvy rep from the firm’s European base in Brussels offers a slice of humble pie.

Europe is home to some of the biggest players in tyres, in the shape of France’s Michelin, Germany’s Continental and Goodyear Dunlop, he explains. The French, in particular, are fiercely patriotic about buying ‘local’, and over the years Bridgestone’s high-quality, high-price ethos hasn’t been enough in the face of equally premium products with a European stamp.

If Brunel had made tyres, they’d have been in the Bridgestone mould (sorry about the pun). They’re over-engineered, says our European co-host, but uniquely among the inhabited continents we just haven’t bought into that – and until now Bridgestone’s management hasn’t known what to do about it.

In America the firm simply bought a struggling American tyre firm called Firestone and sold tyres under that name. Easy. But talk about the European tyre brands though, and you’d have to have very, very deep pockets to buy one.

Essentially, Bridgestone hasn’t known what to do about Europe. Now, though, there’s the sense in the press briefing of change being afoot. Europe is the final frontier, and Bridge-stone is James T. Kirk.

So, then, the aim is to make tyres that are still of the highest quality, but to streamline the process to be able to compete more closely on price – and to get more car makers to fit its tyres as standard out of the factory, in so-called Original Equipment (OE) supply.

During a hectic schedule in Japan the fruits of Bridgestone’s OE efforts is brought to bear at its proving ground in Tochigi Prefecture, in the uniquely lanky shape of the special tyres fitted to the BMW i3. A large diameter is nothing new,

but combined with spindly width it suddenly is. It’s the ultimate low rolling resistance all-weather tyre, and it can’t have been cheap to develop.

But this is a firm not unfamiliar with spending money to succeed and you’d be daft to bet against them making further inroads into Europe. Supplying the only tyres to fit the i3 is a colourful feather in the Japanese brand’s cap, and this journalist, at least, is satisfied that for safety and quality just look for the B.

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