Mickey Thompson

Mickey Thompson was born in 1928 in Alhambra, California, and spent his life pushing vehicles to their limits. In September 1960, driving a car called Challenger 1 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, he became the first American to exceed 400 miles per hour on land, recording a top speed of 406.60 mph. He was already a drag racing champion by then and had competed in the Indianapolis 500. When he founded the tire company bearing his name in 1963, he brought that drive for performance directly into the products.

The ET Street and ET Drag tires established the brand's identity immediately. The ET Street became the standard DOT-legal drag tire for street/strip builds, used everywhere from bracket racing to NHRA competition classes that require street-legal rubber. The compound and carcass construction were developed specifically around drag racing demands: maximum forward grip at launch, consistent performance run to run, and enough carcass integrity to get back to the staging lanes without drama. The ET Drag slick followed for dedicated competition use where DOT ratings didn't matter.

Mickey Thompson was also a major figure in off-road racing, competing in and winning events in the desert racing scene that would eventually become the Baja 1000 as it's known today. That hands-on off-road competition experience fed directly into the brand's tire development for trucks. Thompson passed away in 1988. Cooper Tire acquired the company in 2003, and when Goodyear completed its purchase of Cooper in 2021, Mickey Thompson came under the Goodyear umbrella.

Today the brand is split between its two original identities: the Baja Boss series for off-road trucks, built on desert racing heritage, and the ET Street and ET Drag lines for drag racing, which remain benchmarks in the segment. Both lines benefit from Goodyear's global R&D resources while keeping the specialty performance focus that made the brand.