About Honda  History of Honda   The Honda worldwide business empire started as many do in humble beginnings. Gihei Honda was a village blacksmith in Japan who had taken to repairing bicycles that were becoming popular in Japan at the beginning of the 20th Century. His eldest son, Soichiro, was born in 1906 and inherited from his father an inborn manual dexterity and curiosity about machines. After a while Gihei, sensing an opportunity, opened a bicycle shop. Soon his business began to be seen as the best bicycle store in the neighbourhood. When he was about to leave higher elementary school, Soichiro Honda saw an advertisement for Tokyo Art Shokai, an automobile servicing company, in a magazine. The ad itself was not for bicycles but for “Manufacture and Repair of Automobiles, Motorcycles and Gasoline Engines”. Even as a toddler Soichiro Honda had been thrilled by the first car that was ever seen in his village and often used to say in later life that he could never forget the smell of oil it gave off. So it is easy to imagine that when young Honda saw the ad he immediately decided that he had to work at Art Shokai. He successfully applied to become an apprentice in 1922, aged 15, and was very fortunate that he received a positive reply. Employment in those days was a world apart from what we now expect. Juniors were given board, lodging and a little pocket money, but they received no real wages. But his experiences as an apprentice became an enormous positive influence on his later life. Enthusiasm, an appreciation of the need to improvise, a “feel” for machines soon marked him out for attention from his employer. In the early 1920’s most automobiles were foreign made and there were many different makes and models of motorcar and motorcycle imported into Japan for the benefit of an affluent social class. Therefore he had the benefit of studying every different type of vehicle and because he had a thirst for knowledge he amazed his employer with his mechanical understanding. Motorsport in Japan began around the time of the First World War, (1914-1918) starting with motorcycles and developed into full-scale car racing in the 1920s. His employer developed racing cars using engines and chassis from American cars even on one model adapting an aeroplane engine to power the vehicle. To this day the Honda Corporation have the car “the Cutiss” in operable condition in their museum. The seventeen year old Soichiro Honda rode as the engineer in that car with his employer as driver to win the 5th Japanese Automobile race in 1924. Note, in those days the engineer rode in the car and was not in the pits. By 1928, Honda had completed his apprenticeship and at the age of 21 was rewarded with the opportunity to run his own branch of the motor repair business. Always innovative adapted fire engines to carry larger water pumps and enlarged buses to customers requirements. Within seven years his branch had grown from a staff of one to over thirty. Honda had married but continued his interest in motor racing but after an accident in which his brother was severely injured and the advent of war in the far east, motor racing was suspended. In 1936, the same year the accident occurred, Mr. Honda became dissatisfied with repair work and began to plan a move into manufacturing. He wanted to make piston rings but could not get financial investment for this new venture as the bankers could see no advantage in changing a perfectly profitable repair company into a manufacturing one. Not to be deterred he sought an alliance with an acquaintance and set up a new company, to design and manufacture pistons. Following a series of technical failures he enrolled part time as a student of metallurgy. He studied and worked very hard, but over the next three years his manufacturing trials were successful and he left the repair business for good and threw himself into full time work as a manufacturer of piston rings. Still things did not go as smoothly as he planned and he had problems with quality control rejection from his customers. But his persistence paid off and eventually contracts were awarded for his pistons from major automobile and aircraft manufacturers. However, on December 7, 1941, Japan rushed headlong into the Pacific War. Honda’s piston factory was placed under the control of the Ministry of Munitions. In 1942, Toyota took over 40% of the company’s equity and Honda was “downgraded” from president of the Company to senior managing director. The male employees gradually disappeared as they were called up for military service, and both adult women and female students began to work in the factory as members of the “volunteer corps.” Mr. Honda would calibrate the machines himself and took pains to ensure that the manufacturing process was made as safe and simple as possible for these inexperienced female workers. It was at this time that he devised ways of automating the production of piston rings. He also invented an automatic milling machine for wooden aircraft propellers. Kawakami was very impressed with Mr. Honda’s ingenuity: previously it had taken a week to make a single propeller by hand, but now it was possible to turn out two every thirty minutes. Air raids on Japan became increasingly intensified and it was clear that the country was heading for defeat. The company suffered a further disaster on January 13, 1945, when an earthquake struck and the plant collapsed.  This was followed by Japan’s defeat on August 15. The country had undergone tremendous change, and Mr. Honda’s life, like that of Japan itself, was about to be totally transformed. The beginnings of Honda In 1946 Mr. Honda came across a small generator engine that had been used to power an army field radio. As we have seen he was not just a skilled engineer but an innovator and inventor and his immediate idea was to use the motor to power a bicycle. In post war Japan the bicycle was used as the primary means of freight transport and the addition of a small motor would assist. Herein lies the beginning of Honda Motor Company. Even so his first design encompassed the motor forward of the handlebars, driving the front wheel, but the extra weight over the front tyre caused frequent blow outs in the poor quality rubber tyres. So he redesigned the motorbike with the motor slung between the wheels driving the rear wheel. Motorbike production had been re-started in Japan after the War by existing manufacturers and even a motorised scooter had been designed but these were unaffordable by many. Honda’s design incorporated a 50cc engine which was cheap to run and the bike was affordable by many. This 2-stroke 50 cc modified engine that represented the beginning for Honda Motor Co. was among the first of such products to appear. Mr. Honda managed to buy about five hundred of these generator motors, but because quality and performance was his mantra, and the engine in its original form blew out the petrol and oil mixture from its carburettor so soiling the rider, he stripped down and rebuilt each engine so that this did not happen. This was the origin of Honda’s quality control. By word of mouth the quality of the first Honda motorcycles spread and It was very apparent that the modified engines would soon all be used. Naturally, Mr. Honda was making preparations for what would come next. What they worked on, of course, was the development of their own engine, and the manufacture of a Honda engine. By 1949 the first completely designed motorcycle from Honda was produced, the D-type (for Dream) machine was produced with a innovative system of clutch control and the machines were produced in a distinctive maroon colour as opposed from to the majority of bikes painted black. The D-type had a 98cc engine which produced 3hp. The Honda was certainly noticed but after initial success the Honda Company ran into problems caused by the economy. What Mr. Honda realised is that whilst he was hiring the best engineers he lacked a sales and marketing strategy. He soon put that right and before fifty years had elapsed, 1997 Honda had sold over one hundred million motorbikes! In 1959 Honda introduced the SuperCub scooter, which itself has sold fifty million worldwide.   Up to 1968, Honda was synonymous with world-class motorcycles. His entry into completive motorcycle sport convinced the motorcycle aficionados worldwide that Honda was a world-leading brand. But in the late 1960’s Honda produced their first passenger motorcar, the Honda 1300. Powered by an air cooled engine performance was impressive but the problems of air cooled engines, weight and noise, prompted a change to the more common place water cooled engines that we are familiar with today. But that did not deter Mr. Honda and his team of brilliant engineers to persist with air-cooled engines for Formula One racing cars. There were lessons to be learnt with the difficulties of designing a motor car to compete on a world stage. Those involved in the Honda1300 project agreed unanimously. The pain indeed contributed much to the development of Honda's subsequent, highly successful automobile models. The Civic model was developed which provided the foundation for the Honda reputation for reliability, innovation and value for money in motorcars.  In the intervening years Honda’s innovation has been synonymous with motorcar, motorcycle, powered lawnmower, outboard motor, generator and similar motor powered equipment design and reliability. Honda have even designed executive jet powered aircraft! Soichiro Honda retired as President of Honda in 1973, and died in 1991.