{"id":37836,"date":"2024-12-21T11:01:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lignesauto.fr\/?p=37836"},"modified":"2024-12-21T11:01:42","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:01:42","slug":"laventure-michelin-1-when-the-apprentice-ap-16934-returns-45-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lignesauto.fr\/?p=37836","title":{"rendered":"L’Aventure Michelin – 1. When the apprentice AP-16934 returns, 45 years later…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before visiting Aventure Michelin in the heart of Clermont-Ferrand, here’s the other reason why I went there\u2026 In July 1979, I celebrated my baccalaur\u00e9at as an industrial draughtsman. As the icing on the cake, I’d known since June of that year that my next \u2018school\u2019 year would be in Clermont-Ferrand, as an apprentice at Michelin. And not just anywhere: Place des Carmes, next to the historic site where the company’s headquarters are located today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Place des Carmes during the works that will culminate in the inauguration of the new head office in 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In September 1979, I moved into a young workers\u2018 hostel in Gerzat, close to the Michelin workers\u2019 housing estate. I slept a few hundred metres from the French manufacturer’s test tracks at Ladoux (inaugurated in 1965), where prototype tyres were being made. And cars\u2026 I was 18 years old and life was giving me the wink of an eye: prototypes that were already very close to me! Less than ten kilometres from these tracks, the Place des Carmes in Clermont-Ferrand is nothing like it was 45 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clermont-Ferrand from the air: in 1<\/strong>: the Ladoux test tracks. In 2<\/strong>: the young apprentices’ hostel in Gerzat. In 3<\/strong>: the Cataroux factory and its tyre test slides. In 4<\/strong>: the Place des Carmes where the apprentices worked…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the time, my apprentice number was AP-16934. Every morning, my fellow students and I went to a small building opposite the factory, on the other side of the street. The bridge that spans the square, now pedestrianised, doesn’t yet exist. Nor does the tramway that now runs across it. It’s a different time: the second oil crisis has not yet hit the country and Val\u00e9ry Giscard d’Estaing is inviting us to dinner at his home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The factory was a hive of activity, with workers and lorries driving through a maze of streets. Further on, on another site, the first Michelin tyres were made for Renault’s F1 cars (which were just starting out) and later for Ferrari. Michelin’s F1 radial was going to give Goodyear<\/em> a thrashing! I’m in Clermont-Ferrand: the Michelin city. The factories are IN the town… It’s still impressive today. Ironically, a few months after I left, Michelin set up the CIRM, the forerunner of the museum, next to the historic site on Place des Carmes: the Michelin Information and Meeting Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Michelin’s head office at Place des Carmes today\u2026 lignesauto.fr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My apprenticeship didn’t last for years, because less than three years later, I pushed open the doors of \u00c9ditons Michel Hommell at 7 rue de Lille in Paris to make my AUTOhebdo<\/em> debut with Etienne Moity as my mentor. For all that, Michelin remains the professional foundation of everything that followed, or almost everything. And I waited 45 years to set foot there again and visit the Michelin Adventure. It’s about time, life’s little ship…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Carmes site was the birthplace of the Michelin company in 1889 and today occupies 15 hectares in the city centre, with offices as well as industrial activity. Pictured here leaving the factory in 1929 \u00a9Michelin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Everything has changed. This is not nostalgia, because how could it have been otherwise. I’m more of a fan of “it’ll be better tomorrow<\/em>\u201c, or as Sanseverino so brilliantly wrote: \u201dit was better now<\/em>.” So I enjoy it. “You shouldn’t hang around too much tonight, Place de Carmes<\/em> is a bit of a dive<\/em>” I’m told at the bar where I start my day with a coffee to warm up the atmosphere. It’s 1 degree outside. I can’t find the building where I did my apprenticeship. “There used to be a school on the other side of the square, but it was relocated a little further on and then closed<\/em>“, says the tobacconist where I play a lottery: it’s Friday 13 December, and I’m back where it all began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What can I say about this factory that I worked in nearly half a century ago? Nothing, I don’t recognise anything, because everything here is new (below). And it’s brand new, because the architecture dates from the beginning of 2021! I push open the reception doors. I find a charming hostess who explains to me what this site has become: formerly an industrial site, today it’s the head office – since the early 2000s – at 23 place des Carmes Dechaux. “All the infrastructure in front of the factory is new<\/em>,” says the hostess, who is amused by the reason for my visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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