[9] In 1926, the company opened one of the world's largest rubber plantations, extending over one million acres (1,560 sq mi; 4,050 km2), in Liberia, West Africa.

[citation needed] In 1927, Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone visited Southern California to select locations for new factories.

His friends said Ford wanted to be near the ocean and picked Long Beach and suggested Firestone locate in South Gate, California a small community southeast of downtown Los Angeles that at the time was mostly farmland.

Architects Curlett and Beelman designed a spectacular four-story Italianate-style complex, with its own power plant and decorated with polychrome murals by Gladding, McBean depicting the tire and rubber-making process.

A year after the plant opened in 1928, it expanded to double the initial size, and by 1954 grew to nearly one million square feet (23 acres; 9.3 ha).

The town grew around Firestone, its main boulevard was named after Harvey, and Los Angeles became the number one tire market in the country.

By the mid-1970s, Ford and General Motors had massive layoffs as Firestone and other manufacturers opened new plants in non-union locales like Wilson, North Carolina.

[10] In 1928, the company built a factory in Brentford, England, a longtime Art Deco landmark on a major route into the city; this closed in 1979.

[citation needed] After its purchase by Trafalgar House, the building was demolished during the August 1980 bank holiday weekend, reportedly in anticipation of its becoming listed.

With a work force exceeding 3,000 employees, the Memphis plant was the largest tire manufacturer in the company's worldwide operation.

[15][16] During World War II, the company was called on by the U.S. Government to make artillery shells, aluminum kegs for food transport, and rubberized military products.

[citation needed] On September 2, 1940, William Hoppmann, the General Manager of Firestone's Havana office was discharged from his position under the suspicion of being a Nazi agent.

Dayco later sued both Firestone and Goodyear, alleging that the two companies conspired to monopolize the tire industry in the United States.

In late 1979, Firestone brought in John Nevin, the ex-head of Zenith Electronics, as president to save the hemorrhaging company from total collapse.

[24] He spun off non-tire related businesses, including the Firestone Country Club; it was considered a deliberate plan to boost the stock price, and it paid off.

There are over 2,300 Complete Auto Care locations in the United States, all of them independently owned by Firestone, with about 20 million customers each year as of 2002.

[39] In 1950, Firestone along with General Motors and Standard Oil, were charged and convicted of criminal conspiracy for their part in the Great American streetcar scandal.

In March 1978, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced publicly a formal investigation into defects of the Firestone 500.

[citation needed] In 1973, only two years after the 500's debut, Thomas A. Robertson, Firestone's director of development, wrote an internal memo stating "We are making an inferior quality radial tire which will subject us to belt–edge separation at high mileage".

[42] Firestone introduced strict quality control measures in an attempt to fix the inherent problems, however they were not successful in eliminating the basic faults.

Multiple lawsuits were settled out of court and the constant negative publicity crippled the company's sales and share price.

[44][45] After years of bad publicity and millions paid out in compensation to victims, Firestone was losing vast amounts of money, and its name was severely damaged.

[50] In the period between 1926 and 1946 Christine Whyte concluded that: The collusion between Firestone and government officials to keep wages low and coerce workers onto the plantations was at best substantially overlooked, at worst regarded as a form of "development" in itself.

[50]In September 1990, rebel NPFL forces (led by Charles Taylor, who would later be convicted of war crimes) executed sitting Liberian president Samuel Doe[51] and seized the Harbel plantation.

The company's ventures in Liberia have been the subject of considerable scrutiny and criticism, including a 2005 Alien Tort Claims Act case[57] brought in California by the International Labor Rights Fund and a 2014 investigative report by ProPublica entitled "Firestone and the Warlord",[58] and a PBS Frontline documentary by the same name.

[59] In 1996, several state agencies in Arizona began experiencing major issues with Firestone tires on Ford Explorers.

According to Firestone's last filing with the National Highway Transportation Administration, only 90,259 of more than 2.5 million recalled tires were confirmed as removed from service.