Korbach

Medieval town in northern Hesse, Germany, home to a large Continental tyre plant. See Hesse.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
It’s All About the Bike	Robert Penn	setting	Penn watches his Grand Prix 4000 tyres being made at the Continental factory.

It’s All About the Bike — Robert Penn (2010)

Source: It’s All About the Bike · Readwise highlight

The small, medieval town of Korbach in central Germany is dominated by the factory (located on Continental Street) in the way towns in Lancashire were by mills in Victorian times.

• Role: setting
• In the book: In chapter 4, the former pro Hardy Bölts guides Penn around Continental’s Korbach plant. He follows the rubber mixing, the hand assembly of clinchers, the stitching of tubulars and the vulcanising, and pulls his own tyres from the ovens.
• Why it matters: It is where the tyres for the dream bike are made. Penn explains that he chose Continental because their tyres had never let him down, and the factory town shows the industrial scale behind a hand-finished product.