The
founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda was a mechanical engineer with a
passion for motorcycle and automobile racing. Honda started his company
in 1946 by building motorized bicycles with small, war-surplus engines.
Honda would grow to become the world’s leading manufacturer of
motorcycles and later one of the leading automakers. Following its
founder's lead, Honda has always been a leader in technology,
especially in the area of engine development.
Soichiro Honda was described as a maverick in a nation of conformists.
He made it a point to wear loud suits and wildly colored shirts. An
inventor by nature who often joined the work on the floors of his
factories and research laboratories, Honda developed engines that
transformed the motorcycle into a worldwide means of transportation.
Born
in 1906, Honda grew up in the town of Tenryu, Japan. The eldest son of
a blacksmith who repaired bicycles, the young Soichiro had only an
elementary school education when, in his teens, he left home to seek
his fortune in Tokyo. An auto repair company hired him in 1922, but for
a year he was forced to serve as a baby-sitter for the auto shop's
owner and his wife. While employed at the auto shop, however, Honda
built his own racing car using an old aircraft engine and handmade
parts and participated in racing. His racing career was short lived,
however. He suffered serious injuries in a 1936 crash.
By
1937, Honda had recovered from his injuries. He established his own
company, manufacturing piston rings, but he found that he lacked a
basic knowledge of casting. To obtain it, he enrolled in a technical
high school, applying theories as he learned them in the classrooms to
his own factory. But he did not bother to take examinations at the
school. Informed that he would not be graduated, Honda commented that a
diploma was "worth less than a movie theater ticket. A ticket
guarantees that you can get into the theater. But a diploma doesn't
guarantee that you can make a living."
Honda’s burgeoning company mass-produced metal propellers during WWII,
replacing wooden ones. Allied bombing and an earthquake destroyed most
of his factory and he sold what was left to Toyota in 1945.
In 1946, he established the Honda Technical Research Institute to
motorize bicycles with small, war-surplus engines. These bikes became
very popular in Japan. The institute soon began making engines. Renamed
Honda Motor in 1948, the company began manufacturing motorcycles.
Business executive Takeo Fujisawa was hired to manage the company while
Honda focused on engineering
In 1951, Honda brought out the
Dream Type E motorcycle, which proved an immediate success thanks to
Honda's innovative overhead valve design. The smaller F-type cub (1952)
accounted for 70% of Japan's motorcycle production by the end of that
year. A public offering and support from Mitsubishi Bank allowed Honda
to expand and begin exporting. The versatile C100 Super Cub, released
in 1958, became an international bestseller.
In 1959, the
American Honda Motor was founded and soon began using the slogan, "You
meet the nicest people on a Honda," to offset the stereotype of
motorcyclists during that period. Though the small bikes were dismissed
by the dominant American and British manufacturers of the time, the
inexpensive imports brought new riders into motorcycling and changed
the industry forever in the United States.
Ever the racing
enthusiast, Honda began entering his company’s motorcycles in domestic
Japanese races during the 1950s. In the mid-1950s, Honda declared that
his company would someday win world championship events – a declaration
that seemed unrealistic at the time.
In June 1959, the Honda
racing team brought their first motorbike to compete in the Isle of Man
Tourist Trophy (T.T.) race, then the world’s most popular motorcycle
race. This was the first entry by a Japanese team. With riders Naomi
Taniguchi, who finished sixth, Teisuke Tanaka, who finished eighth, and
Kiyoshi Kawashima, who would later succeed Soichiro as Honda Motor
president, as team manager, Honda won the manufacturer's prize.
However,
they were not pleased with their performance. Kawashima remembers: "We
were clobbered. Our horsepower was less than half that of the winner."
Learning
from this experience, Soichiro and his team worked even harder to make
rapid progress in their motorsports activities. Two years after their
first failure, they were the sensation at the TT by capturing the first
five places in both the 125cc and 250cc classes. The upstart Japanese
had outclassed all their rivals. As a result of the team's stellar
performance, the Honda name became well known worldwide, and its export
volume rose dramatically. Soichiro seemed to have foreseen the future
of Japan, which, twenty years later, was to become one of the world's
leading economies.
Honda would become the most successful
manufacturer in all of motorcycle racing. Honda has since won hundreds
of national and world championships in all forms of motorcycle
competition.
While Honda oversaw a worldwide company by the
early-1970s (Honda entered the automobile market in 1967), he never
shied away from getting his hands greasy. Sol Sanders, author of a
Honda biography, said Honda appeared "almost daily" at the research lab
where development work was being done. Even as president of the
company, "he worked as one of the researchers," Sanders quoted a Honda
engineer as saying. "Whenever we encountered a problem, he studied it
along with us."
In 1973, Honda, at 67, retired on the 25th
anniversary of Honda's founding. He declared his conviction that Honda
should remain a youthful company.
"Honda has always moved ahead
of the times, and I attribute its success to the fact that the firm
possesses dreams and youthfulness," Honda said at the time.
Unlike
most chief executive officers in Japan, who step down to become
chairmen of their firms, Honda retained only the title of "supreme
adviser."
In retirement, Honda devoted himself to public service
and frequent travel abroad. He received the Order of the Sacred
Treasure, first class, the highest honor bestowed by Japan's emperor.
He also received the American auto industry's highest award when he was
admitted to the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1989. Honda was awarded the
AMA’s highest honor, the Dud Perkins Award, in 1971.
Honda died on August 5, 1991 from liver failure at 84. His wife, Sachi, and three children survived him.
Source : Motorcycle Museum
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