Dunlop Motorsport has provided racing tyres for as long as cars and motorcycles have been in high-speed competition.

The company has been producing racing gear at its Ashold Farm Road site for 125 years.

It supplies race teams with hundreds of specifications of car and motorcycle tyres, serviced by 20 trucks and 50 staff who travel the world’s circuits throughout the sporting calendar.

Overall, the firm’s motorsport division distributes around 300,000 tyres per year around the world.

The firm’s tyres, invented by John Boyd Dunlop, have long been associated with sporting success.

The first competitive triumph came from cycle racer Willie Hume in 1889. Since then, Dunlop’s worldwide success in every major form of motorsport has gone hand in hand with the continuous progress of technology.

Dunlop’s car tyres broke records at Brooklands and took the famous Bentley Boys to five wins in the Le Mans 24-Hour race between 1924 and 1930.

Dunlop won eight championships in Formula One in the 1960s, with similar success in World Rallying and World Sports Cars during the next two decades.

Dunlop also played a crucial role in the glamorous Land Speed Record battles between the war years when Sir Henry Segrave’s Golden Arrow vied with Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird and the American challengers.

The company has been at the heart of bike racing throughout its history.

The first ever premier-class World Champion in 1949, Englishman Les Graham, rode his AJS to victory on Dunlops.

A string of great names followed from John Surtees, Giacomo Agostini and Phil Read right up to Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey towards the end of the 500cc era.

While every 250 GP since April 1996 and every World Championship since 1993 has been won on Dunlop tyres. Dunlop has seen off the opposition in the 125 class also, clocking up a century of consecutive wins since 2003.

Production at Dunlop in 1989

• This week, the Birmingham Post launched a campaign to keep the famous old company in the region over fears it may move abroad.