Tornel or Hulera Tornel is a Mexican enterprise and only surviving tire producer in Mexico, dedicated to making tires and other automotive industry-related products. Founded in 1933 by Mexican businessman Armando Tornel, who in October 2006 entered the Worldwide Tire Industry Hall of Fame. Tornel has been consolidated, making it the top Latin American tire producer, and one of the largest in the world. History Compañía Hulera Tornel is a Mexican tire company part of JK Tyre group of India. The company was originally owned by the Tornel family, one of the oldest families in Mexico renown in the Mexican industry and society. The company was founded by Isauro Tornel Toriz and his eldest son, Armando Tornel Murillo, native from El Salto de Juanacatlán, Jalisco, Mexico. Armando entered the tire business when he was only 15 years old, while working as a tire seller at the same time he was studying in the night school of San Indelfonso in Mexico City. Years later, his father Mr. Isauro Tornel Toriz decided to send Armando to the United States, where he pursued a technical career in Tire Engineering at Smithers Laboratories, and rubber technology at Vanderbilt Laboratories, gaining technical and practical experience at Goodyear and Mohawk, both in Akron, Ohio. Upon Armando´s return to Mexico during 1933, he partnered with his father (and later with his younger brothers Salvador and Raúl) and together they opened a tire-sale business with 27 employees, at a store located at Hidalgo Avenue number 91, in the historic downtown area of Mexico City. In 1937, the business was incorporated as Compañía Hulera El Centenario with the Tornel family as the majority shareholders, and it produced and marketed tires under the America and All States brands. In 1940 the Tornel family associated with Firestone through a joint venture, changing the name of the company to "Cía. Hulera Firestone Centenario". Some years later, the Tornel family decided to sell their stock to Firestone, and independently continued in the tire business on their own by incorporating the wholly owned Compañía Hulera Tornel (Tornel Rubber Company), manufacturing tires as well as rubber and supplies for tire repair. Under Compañía Hulera Tornel, Armando assumed the position of Chair of the company, while his brothers Raul and Salvador occupied other key positions as senior members of the company's Board of Directors until their deaths. In the 1950s Compañía Hulera Tornel entered other sectors