Tintin Forums

In "The Seven Crystal Balls" Tintin and his friends stay the night at Tarragon's house due to their car's tyres bursting as a result of the sun.

Has such a thing ever been known to actually happen? I would have thought that tyres made in the 1930s or 40s would have been tough enough to withstand heat.

Is such an incident feasible and, if not, what would have been a more logical, and dramatic, way to keep Tintin and the others from leaving?

Good question indeed. Funny coincidence, but two days after reading your question, I read an anecdote about Camille Arambourg, a paleontologist. Apparently he made a breakthrough in his studies regarding Neandertals after a rather painful accident:

In 1947, while doing fieldwork in Sahara, --- he took refuge from the midday sun under the wing of his light aircraft. As he sat there, a tyre burst from the heat and the plane tipped suddenly, striking him a painful blow on the upper body. Later in Paris he went for an X-ray of his neck, and noticed that his own vertebrae were aligned exactly like those of the stooped and hulking Neandertal. Either he was physiologically primitive or the Neandertal's posture had been misdescribed. In fact, it was the latter. --- It changed utterly how we viewed Neandertals.

(Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything, page 551)

So yes, it's been reported, at least once. I'll leave it for someone else to explain why exactly they burst, and how the tires have changed since then (I haven't heard that it's a risk nowadays).

I'd assume it's because air expands as it gets warmer, and this expansion would raise the air pressure in the confined space of the tyre's inner tube. You're certainly meant to check and correct your tyre pressure if the weather turns very cold or hot, but I agree that you don't often hear of tyres going bang on a hot day these days. Maybe modern inner tubes are stronger, but maybe it still happens in really hot countries.


I've never much thought about this, but actually I don't think it's just a slightly weak or undramatic plot device on the part of Hergé. Surely the sun - the Incas' deity - is the perfect thing to be "attacking" Haddock's car in this book. It may well have been an unlikely occurence even back in the 1940s, but if so that only adds to the subtle build up of weirdness in the Tarragon's house part of the book, with another freaky natural phenomenon to come in the shape of the ball lightning (another ball of fire).

Just thinking about all this reminds me how very good that book is. I'm going to have to re-read it tonight (for the hundredth time!)

Thanks for the nice anecote, Mondrian. I've read that Bill Bryson book, but had forgotten that bit. Another book to re-read sometime!

In order for car tyres to burst, there have to be extreme heat circumstances.This has been shown as an incident in Shooting Stars, wherein car tyres are shown to burst due to rising heat. During Crystal Balls wherein all characters are wearing winter clothes, it is unlikely that Haddock's car tyres burst in the sun.

It would have probably been, that Haddock's car tyres bursted because of man-made circumstances.With reference to Chiquito, bursting car tyres would be fun sport for a person unaffected by targeted knives.

...or that rubber becomes weaker in heat, or both.


That's a lovely explanation, and one I want to believe. Considering the rainbow seems to be acting rather weirdly as well (more here), I'm almost sure Hergé did it on purpose. Not conclusive evidence of course, but these seem sort of "hidden jokes", which add depth into the book.

I like Balthazar's answer. Hergé's mastery really is on full display in that book, really from the opening page where the stranger on the train raises unsettling questions about archaeological tomb-robbing. There's a subtly spooky quality running through the entire story, punctuated occasionally by more dramatically frightening bits (e.g., the infamous mummy/window dream sequence). Even toward the end, where Calculus seems to be hopelessly lost - that sequence with the hat is also slightly creepy. It's this absolute mastery of how to construct and shade a sequence, how to strike exactly the right chords and tones, that makes these books that adults can return to again and again, notwithstanding their nominal status as 'kid's lit.' In many ways the 'quieter' books (Castafiore Emerald, Seven Crystal Balls) display this subtle artistry more fully than the more rip-roaring adventures. Hergé at his peak knew exactly what he was doing in every panel...including the tire sequence, a false alarm that subtly compounds the atmosphere of anxiety while also hinting at the power of the sun.