Tokyo, December 2, 1998 - Pirelli Tyres announced today a
joint venture agreement with Abe Shokai to jointly operate in the
Japanese market. This commercial joint venture, which will address
the replacement market, will strengthen Pirelli’s operations in
Japan, where it is one of the leading imported brands and n01 in
High Performance car tyres.

The joint venture, which will be managed and controlled at 51% by
Pirelli Tyres, and for the remaining 49% by Abe Shokai, will market
and distribute car, recreational, motorcycle and agricultural tyres
in Japan: the objective is to double sales volumes to over 600,000
units by the year 2000. Through the new company, Pirelli will
directly distribute tyres to the local market, with a network of
approximately 100 point of sales and over 2,000 indipendent tyre
dealers throughout the country, thus improving its commercial
efficiency and effectiveness.

This new initiative will be supported by a global investment of
approximately 1.7 billion Yen (over 20 billion Lira), the largest
Italian investment in Japan in the current year.

With this joint venture, Pirelli aims at improving its marketing
and sales effectiveness, rationalizing the logistics system by
centralizing order taking and delivery, and fortifying marketing
and promotional activities.

Tyre distribution in Japan is undergoing a thorough transformation
and modernization, with the growing of autosupermarkets and
franchising shops with a strong focus on customer service. The new
joint venture thus allows Pirelli a closer presence in one of the
most demanding and innovative markets in the world.

Pirelli Tyres has been present in the Japanese market since the
late Sixties, through its sole distributor Abe Shokai, with a
strong focus on the top of the range tyres, thanks to which it has
gained an exceptional brand awareness and a high profile image. It
currently sells a complete range of products, including P6000,
Pirelli’s biggest success tyre in the high performance segment for
saloon cars, and PZero, Pirelli’s fastest tyre fitting supercars
and sportcars from Ferrari to Porsche.

Milan, November 26, 1998 - At the 1998 Essen Motor Show,
from 27 November to 6 December, one of the world’s most important
tuner events, Pirelli will unveil a new range of 19 and 20 inch
diameter supertyres.

The ultra-high performance Pirelli PZero and P7000 car tyres are,
in fact, available today in 10 sizes which, in their latest,
extreme incarnation of 19 and 20 inch diameter, enable not only the
” tuners” but also the car manufacturers themselves to experiment
with the kind of concept cars the creation of which was considered
impossible until today.
The first of this new breed to appear was the futuristic XK180
roadster by Jaguar, the world’s first car to be fitted with 20 inch
diameter Pirelli PZero tyres. Typical of the on-going close
technological co-operation between Jaguar and Pirelli, after having
adopted 18 inch tyres as original equipment for the XKR coupe, the
two companies decided to explore the potential of the giant 20 inch
rims fitted to the ” concept roadster” . The availability of the
Pirelli PZero in such extreme sizes today permits more audacious
new car development work on models like the Audi A8, BMW 7 Series,
Mercedes-Benz S Class and Lexus 400.

But in the meantime, the Callaway C12 supercar, created using the
Chevrolet Corvette as a base, became the world’s first to adopt 19
inch diameter PZero tyres, developed in special sizes 295/30ZR19
and 335/25ZR19, as original equipment to guarantee the C12
hyper-sports handling.
With its 19 inch PZero and P7000 tyres, Pirelli make it possible
for tuners to work with much more extensively sold models, like the
BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz E Class and Audi A6: vehicles which,
with a 19 inch wheel group, can achieve at one and the same time
both sports car handling and the kind of drive comfort expected of
their class.

Now, Pirelli plans to bring that same kind of advanced sports car
handling with comfort to mass produced cars like the BMW 3 Series,
Audi A4, Mercedes-Benz CLK. It is for this reason that the tyre
maker developed a range of tyres which – while of extreme diameter
- maintain a limited tread width in order to be perfectly suited to
the exceptionally confined space of such car bodies and their wheel
housings.
The trend to the giant rim is clearly recognizable also in the SUV
segment, where Pirelli already has the 19″ Scorpion Zero range. The
new 20″ sizes Scorpion Zero will be soon available.
So the Essen Motor Show will be an opportunity to see the applied
technology of the Pirelli ultra-low profile and its considerable
innovative potential in the hands of the tuners: from BMWs by
Hartge to Alfa Romeos by Hormann, the Opels of Irmscher, the
Porsches of Techart, the Renaults of Elia and the Fords of
Schwabengarage.

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…”