Milan, November 18, 1998 - Pirelli has begun to sell the
world’s first ” designer” tyre. This concept is called Author
Design and – a fact which is even more unusual – is not destined to
be fitted to a concept or ultra-high performance car: it is a truck
tyre.
It is, in fact, a limited edition version of the range of Pirelli
Energy ” green” tyres for trucks.
On the sidewall this Pirelli Author Design, well-known designer
Andrea Branzi has ” written” a story: in hieroglyphics, it recounts
the history of the wheel, from pre-historic times to the present
day. Around the whole circumference of the tyre, in fact, are
entwined 4,000 years of ” transport” , from the Egyptian rafts of
the Nile to horse-drawn carriages, from the locomotive and its
plumes of steam to the Space Shuttle. Intuition without precedent:
a wager won by the idea – which has always been one of Pirelli’s
strong points – that tyres, too, can be stylish.

This Author Design was born of a precise graphics project which won
the ” Design the Sidewall of Energy” competition, announced by
Pirelli last year and aimed at the most famous international
architects and designers. Twenty-two projects were entered, from ”
Snake-Snak” the snake by Giovannoni to Lovegrove’s ”
Functionality-Sensuality” , from ” Mantra of the Trucker” by
Morozzi to the mountain landscapes of Sadler and the fossil ”
Traces” of Susani and Trimarchi. Andrea Branzi’s neo-Egyptian won,
” …a narrative ring which serves to create a kind of progressive
dilation of the symbols which, from inside the tyre, extend to the
truck and the environment…”

A challenge, certainly. Made even more interesting by the need to
respect the technical limits dictated by tyre production and by the
competitious rules: thickness of the embossing, markings, the
exclusion of the use of colours.
Technical limitations and not virtual ones: the project really was
destined for mass production. And that is how it turned out:
Branzi’s graphics became ” real” rubber, shaped for a ” real”
industrial mould and the tyres have already been fitted to a MAN
19.603 truck on display at the recent Hannover Show.

And, above all, from today the Pirelli Author Design line is on
sale exclusively in Europe and South America at the premises of the
Pirelli distribution network’s top dealers in sizes which are
fitted to today’s most modern trucks.

” I have often been asked how children view city traffic” ,
commented Bruno Bozzetto, one of the ‘Design the Sidewall of
Energy’ competition’s judges. ” Remembering the moments in which,
driving a car, I have been surrounded and wedged in by trucks of
enormous proportions, literally hemmed in and dominated by giant
tyres which towered over me, my outlook was not, presumably, much
different from that of a child…”