Vanishing Point

If he was alive today he would be 110 years old.......... and probably still influencing Honda design and engineering. Here's to you sir, we owe you so much.

skafia

Thanks for making this post, and to add:

Vanishing Point

Great picture of Soichiro himself flailing a S500. You know he had to be thinking this little car is just the beginning of my Dream. I need a high resolution copy of that picture!
Wonder if that photo was taken at Suzuka Circuit, it would have been recently completed at that point.

freq

I used to have a vanity plate here in Pennsylvania, it read SO HONDA.

Happy (belated) Birthday big guy!!!

adrs2k

That is a great pic!

#172CR

So fun to see the old pics surface!

Mijae007

Sterling Sackey

I had never seen that picture, absolutely awesome.

Vanishing Point

Another great picture of Mr. Honda-san with a broad grin that depicts his unabashed love of his "Dream" come to life.Soichiro Honda

by: Shotaro Kobayashi - Excerpts from "The Pursuit of Dreams"



It was during the test-drive session for the Honda S500 that I first had a chance to meet and have a friendly chat with Soichiro Honda. The date was August 1963. We were to drive the S500, scheduled to debut later that year, at Honda's Arakawa test course.

The Arakawa test course was very primitive. Made on the dry Arakawa river bed, its two straight lines were connected by a slight kink. The test course was surrounded by a simple fence so it was all clearly visible to anyone on the river bank.

Soichiro Honda, whom I met for the first time during the test drive session, hardly looked like the head of a top Japanese corporation. I remember he walked up to us wearing the same white working suit that his engineers wore, and a red cap.

Then he surprised every journalist present by driving and testing the S500 himself with some verve at the circuit. To this day, I have never seen any other executive from a top Japanese carmaker driving his new car in front of media people. Except Honda, that is.

Soichiro Honda was cracking jokes all the time but also replied politely in his own words to the sometimes amateurish questions put to him by journalists. Thereafter, he never changed his style throughout all the years of our long friendship.

Soichiro Honda was an extraordinary man: both an imaginative dreamer and a down to earth engineer. A colourful non-conformist, he could sometimes be stubborn but was always humane and considerate. The eldest son of a blacksmith, Soichiro was born at Komyo, near Hamamatsu, on November 17 1906.

His interest in all forms of machinery was kindled at his father's small workshop where Soichiro helped with bicycle repairs. At the age of eight he first sighted a car that fired his imagination, then, and as a young man he built a series of racing cars, being lucky to escape serious injury when he crashed one spectacularly in 1936.

In the following year, Soichiro set up a piston ring factory, responding to technical snags he encountered by studying metallurgy. In 1946 he set up the Honda Technical Research Institute, which despite its grand name was only a wooden hut. Seeing a desperate need for basic transport all around him in war-scarred Japan, he hit on a scheme. Buying a batch of 500 surplus engines designed to power military radio sets, Soichiro gathered a team to help him attach them to pedal cycles.

Honda's own-made products duly followed and the Honda Motor Co. was established in 1948. During the 1950s, its founder's creative genius propagated a stream of innovative designs making Honda the world leader in motorcycle engineering within an amazingly short time. Awed by the Isle of Man TT when he first visited Europe in 1954, Soichiro made racing success a goal, knowing it could greatly benefit Honda.

Affectionately known to his work force as 'Oyaji' ('Dad'), Honda inspired people to use their imagination and give their best. He was willing to put trust in young people and give full rein to their creativity. Believing that people should advance on merit and not through nepotism, Mr. Honda refused to put relatives in senior posts, and when he retired in 1973 he put the company in the capable hands of Kiyoshi Kawashima.

He and his wife Sachi both held private pilot's licences, he was still skiing, hang-gliding and ballooning at 77, and he was a highly accomplished artist. And he was a man of rare understanding. He had never wanted to follow his father in the smithy or the bicycle shop, and he and Fujisawa made a pact never to force their own sons to join the company. Soichiro actually barred his family from senior positions, insisting that the presidency should be gained on the basis of merit, passed "to a person possessing the most distinguished qualities of leadership."

Soichiro then devoted himself to the Honda Foundation, seeking harmony between technology and the environment. Having fulfilled countless dreams over half a century, he died in August 1991 leaving his wife, a son and two daughters.