Michelin put out a travel guide to promote their tires when
ordinary folks started buying cars in the 20’s and 30’s. It was a promotion that gave a reason to travel by car, when that was new and no-one really had done it before. “Go to such and such town, try out so and so’s roast beef.” It started the “road trip” phenom and evolved from there to what we see today.
Interesting. I had no idea.
Michelin’s motivation to begin the rating system was people weren’t driving enough so they didn’t need to buy new tires. Michelin started to review restaurants in the countryside to get people to drive more in order to try the restaurants and wear out the tires.