Pierre Michelin

Pierre Michelin (1903 - 1937) was a French businessman who was joint head of the Michelin tyre company between 1933 and his early death at the end of 1937, and president of the Citroën car company between September 1935 and 1937. He was part of the Michelin family and son of Édouard Michelin.

Early life Pierre Michelin was the younger of his father's two recorded sons.

Career He only became a director of the family company after 1932 following the death in a flying accident of his elder brother, Étienne Michelin. He was sent to Citroën car company in 1935.

Citroën had filed for bankruptcy in November 1934 when one of its creditors, a steering wheel supplier, applied to the court to enforce payment of a debt. As Citroën's supplier of tyres it was Michelin that was that company's largest creditor. In January 1935 André Citroën, already suffering from the cancer that would kill him a few months later, offered Michelin options to acquire a large block of voting shares in the business as additional security for the monies owed for tyres. With his father otherwise preoccupied, Pierre Michelin jumped at the opportunity, and by the end of January 1935 Michelin controlled more than 50% of the voting capital in Citroën.

Pierre Michelin became president of Citroën in July 1935 when André Citroën died, but by that time he was already running the company, cutting back on wasteful management practices and applying the type of detailed control already in place at the main Michelin plant in Clermont-Ferrand. Although the revolutionary unitary bodyshell was, according to most reports, not affected by the rushed launch schedule, problems with transmission joints and the hydraulic brakes – another "first" in a volume car in Europe – reflected the financial pressure to get the car into production as quickly as possible.

Death On 29 December 1937, while driving his Citroën Traction Avant near Montargis on the main road to the south, Pierre Michelin was involved in a fatal collision. The other car involved was a Peugeot, driven by Louis Lagorgette, the principal private secretary of the SFIO politician Paul Faure. Lagorgette, his wife and his son all died at the scene of the accident. Pierre Michelin died at the hospital in Montargis the next day, soon after undergoing an operation for the amputation of his right leg.

Pierre-Jules Boulanger was left to run Citroën without his friend, something he accomplished with flair and success for the next thirteen years. A sad parallel came in 1950 when Boulanger himself died at Broût-Vernet, Allier, also in a car crash in a Citroën Traction Avant, on Sunday, 12 November 1950, while on the main road between Clermont-Ferrand (the home of Michelin) and Paris.