The History of Honda
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 45,835
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From: Mish-she-gan
Intro reference: So You Think You've Got It Bad? Walk a mile in Soichiro Honda's shoes by Ed Wallace, Dallas Morning News, Special to the Star-Telegram, Sunday, December 15, 2002
Scars As Motivation
The first of nine children, Soichiro Honda was born in 1906 in Iwata Gun, Japan, into a poor farm family. So poor were they, in fact, that in his youth the family's money wouldn't stretch to buy proper clothing for the children. Honda, forced to wear shabby, long worn-out clothing, could do nothing but endure the other students' constant teasing concerning his family's poverty; it would psychologically scar him for fife. However, as still happens today, those same miserable childhood memories would also motivate him, driving him to become a true overachiever.
His turning point came in 1912, when the 6-year-old Honda saw one of the country's few Ford Model Ts drive through his village. Fascinated by his first encounter with a horseless carriage, Honda ran after the car until he noticed that oil had leaked out of the vehicle onto the road. Leaning over, Honda rubbed the oil onto his fingers and held it to his nostrils. Much later in life, Honda would tell others that he could still smell the aroma of that Model T's discharge, as vividly as the day he had discovered it on the road.
Tough Sell
Dreaming about a life in automobiles, Honda set off on his own at 16 to become a mechanic's assistant at the Art Shokai automobile repair center in Tokyo. That had to be a tough sell: As the eldest son, it was his Japanese cultural duty to remain on the family farm and work beside his father. But the teenaged Honda, relentless, finally managed to talk his father into allowing him to leave home.
Next problem? There were 19 other boys working at the Art Shokai, and Honda's job was babysitting the youngest child of the shop's owner. That is, until September 1st, 1923, the day of the Great Tokyo Earthquake. Honda, who had learned not the first thing either about automobile repair or driving during this first year of apprenticeship, pitched in to save their clients' vehicles by driving them to safety. With Tokyo in ruins, Honda then saved his boss's business by becoming a taxi driver, using his boss's motorcycle to transport the dispossessed.
Four years later, in appreciation for his dedication, Honda was allowed to return home and open his own branch of the Art Shokai. He quickly gained a reputation as a man who could fix anything on any automobile. His first month's earnings were a mere three cents, and he wrote in his diary that one day he hoped to have $300 in savings - at that point, his life's dream.
A Near-Life Experience
Sadly, Honda had picked up an addiction during his years in Tokyo: Alcoholism. His working all day at the shop and out partying with the Geishas every night meant wrecks - and payoffs to the girls' families. (By the way, the Honda Motor Company's official, sanitized biography of Honda refuses to acknowledge this part of their founder's life. Personally, I admire visionaries who have fallen and then redeemed themselves.)
Somehow, Honda went on to become one of Japan's top racers. Then tragedy struck; in the All Japan Rally of 1936, he swerved to avoid an onlooker who had wandered onto the track at the finish line. Honda's car went airborne, and he spent the next 18 months in a hospital recovering from his near-fatal experience.
When he came out he went into piston manufacturing. At first his pistons didn't work, as they were too brittle; attending metallurgy classes at the local college, he learned the secrets of silicon. Although like Henry Ford, Honda was a pacifist, during the Second World War he invented a machine that honed aircraft propellers for Mitsubishi. Before then, the Japanese had always made propellers by hand.
After the war, with his country in ruins, Honda just gave up on life. There weren't many cars on the road, therefore few to repair. He hated the fact that he had helped the Japanese war machine, so when Toyota came to him to buy his piston manufacturing company, Honda sold it for the equivalent of $200,000 in today's money. And the first thing Honda did was take $10,000, go to the local hospital and bribe them out of a 50-gallon drum of medical alcohol with which he proceeded to distill homemade sake. And then our automotive genius went on a nonstop bender.
Conquering Shame Takes Work
Honda awoke two years later, in 1947, broke and with no future. Everything he had owned he had spent, sold or given away. Desperate to reclaim his life, he shamefacedly borrowed $3,500 from his family. With that loan he would start the company that now carries his name.
Honda bought small military surplus engines and attached them to bicycles for sale. When those engines were no longer available, he designed and built his own. As Japan had little gasoline, Honda found a way to distill turpentine from the roots of Japanese fir trees to mix with his meager rationed supply of gas to extend his customers' mobility. (It should be pointed out that cutting trees for this purpose was illegal in Japan. Honda would sneak up into the mountains late at night, and he learned to cut the roots so that he could get the material he needed yet leave the tree standing. That way he wouldn't get caught and be prosecuted.)
Before word processors ever came along, Honda and his partner Takeo Fujisawa wrote 18,000 letters by hand, asking bike dealers in Japan to sell their new motorcycles and offering to help them learn how to sell and repair them. It read in part, "Less than a hundred years ago, your father saw the first bicycle brought in from the Western countries. He knew little about it, nor did he know how to ride it, how to make it, how to deal with the simplest problems.
Because of that spirit of Japanese resourcefulness, he was able to make a comfortable living and left you with a bicycle shop and a way to earn your living. Now we are launching a new product. It will be a motor driven bicycle. You have hardly seen one, and you do not know how to sell it or to repair it. But we intend to help you learn to do both." In response to those 18,000 handwritten letters, 5,000 dealers agreed to handle Honda's motorcycles.
Rising From the Ashes
Apparently ignoring his success, throughout the 50s Japanese banks continued to turn Honda down for loans to expand his business. In the early 60s the Japanese government forbade him to enter the automobile industry and put up roadblocks to make sure he couldn't. Honda ignored everyone and built his business as he saw fit.
He never attended a board meeting of his company; he felt he'd be getting in the way. When he got bored in R & D, Honda would put on a lab coat and build motorcycles on the assembly line with his workers. He overcame his drinking problem.
A little over a year ago, I was talking with my friend David McDavid, who had once met Honda at a dinner party. McDavid told me how Honda had walked around the room, serving the dinner wine to his dealers. Uncomfortable at having this automotive legend doing the work of a waiter, McDavid suggested that the dealers in fact should be catering to the elderly Mr. Honda.
Honda replied, "No, I exist because of you and your dedication. You would still exist without me." And the founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda himself, proceeded to pour McDavid's wine.
Scars As Motivation
The first of nine children, Soichiro Honda was born in 1906 in Iwata Gun, Japan, into a poor farm family. So poor were they, in fact, that in his youth the family's money wouldn't stretch to buy proper clothing for the children. Honda, forced to wear shabby, long worn-out clothing, could do nothing but endure the other students' constant teasing concerning his family's poverty; it would psychologically scar him for fife. However, as still happens today, those same miserable childhood memories would also motivate him, driving him to become a true overachiever.
His turning point came in 1912, when the 6-year-old Honda saw one of the country's few Ford Model Ts drive through his village. Fascinated by his first encounter with a horseless carriage, Honda ran after the car until he noticed that oil had leaked out of the vehicle onto the road. Leaning over, Honda rubbed the oil onto his fingers and held it to his nostrils. Much later in life, Honda would tell others that he could still smell the aroma of that Model T's discharge, as vividly as the day he had discovered it on the road.
Tough Sell
Dreaming about a life in automobiles, Honda set off on his own at 16 to become a mechanic's assistant at the Art Shokai automobile repair center in Tokyo. That had to be a tough sell: As the eldest son, it was his Japanese cultural duty to remain on the family farm and work beside his father. But the teenaged Honda, relentless, finally managed to talk his father into allowing him to leave home.
Next problem? There were 19 other boys working at the Art Shokai, and Honda's job was babysitting the youngest child of the shop's owner. That is, until September 1st, 1923, the day of the Great Tokyo Earthquake. Honda, who had learned not the first thing either about automobile repair or driving during this first year of apprenticeship, pitched in to save their clients' vehicles by driving them to safety. With Tokyo in ruins, Honda then saved his boss's business by becoming a taxi driver, using his boss's motorcycle to transport the dispossessed.
Four years later, in appreciation for his dedication, Honda was allowed to return home and open his own branch of the Art Shokai. He quickly gained a reputation as a man who could fix anything on any automobile. His first month's earnings were a mere three cents, and he wrote in his diary that one day he hoped to have $300 in savings - at that point, his life's dream.
A Near-Life Experience
Sadly, Honda had picked up an addiction during his years in Tokyo: Alcoholism. His working all day at the shop and out partying with the Geishas every night meant wrecks - and payoffs to the girls' families. (By the way, the Honda Motor Company's official, sanitized biography of Honda refuses to acknowledge this part of their founder's life. Personally, I admire visionaries who have fallen and then redeemed themselves.)
Somehow, Honda went on to become one of Japan's top racers. Then tragedy struck; in the All Japan Rally of 1936, he swerved to avoid an onlooker who had wandered onto the track at the finish line. Honda's car went airborne, and he spent the next 18 months in a hospital recovering from his near-fatal experience.
When he came out he went into piston manufacturing. At first his pistons didn't work, as they were too brittle; attending metallurgy classes at the local college, he learned the secrets of silicon. Although like Henry Ford, Honda was a pacifist, during the Second World War he invented a machine that honed aircraft propellers for Mitsubishi. Before then, the Japanese had always made propellers by hand.
After the war, with his country in ruins, Honda just gave up on life. There weren't many cars on the road, therefore few to repair. He hated the fact that he had helped the Japanese war machine, so when Toyota came to him to buy his piston manufacturing company, Honda sold it for the equivalent of $200,000 in today's money. And the first thing Honda did was take $10,000, go to the local hospital and bribe them out of a 50-gallon drum of medical alcohol with which he proceeded to distill homemade sake. And then our automotive genius went on a nonstop bender.
Conquering Shame Takes Work
Honda awoke two years later, in 1947, broke and with no future. Everything he had owned he had spent, sold or given away. Desperate to reclaim his life, he shamefacedly borrowed $3,500 from his family. With that loan he would start the company that now carries his name.
Honda bought small military surplus engines and attached them to bicycles for sale. When those engines were no longer available, he designed and built his own. As Japan had little gasoline, Honda found a way to distill turpentine from the roots of Japanese fir trees to mix with his meager rationed supply of gas to extend his customers' mobility. (It should be pointed out that cutting trees for this purpose was illegal in Japan. Honda would sneak up into the mountains late at night, and he learned to cut the roots so that he could get the material he needed yet leave the tree standing. That way he wouldn't get caught and be prosecuted.)
Before word processors ever came along, Honda and his partner Takeo Fujisawa wrote 18,000 letters by hand, asking bike dealers in Japan to sell their new motorcycles and offering to help them learn how to sell and repair them. It read in part, "Less than a hundred years ago, your father saw the first bicycle brought in from the Western countries. He knew little about it, nor did he know how to ride it, how to make it, how to deal with the simplest problems.
Because of that spirit of Japanese resourcefulness, he was able to make a comfortable living and left you with a bicycle shop and a way to earn your living. Now we are launching a new product. It will be a motor driven bicycle. You have hardly seen one, and you do not know how to sell it or to repair it. But we intend to help you learn to do both." In response to those 18,000 handwritten letters, 5,000 dealers agreed to handle Honda's motorcycles.
Rising From the Ashes
Apparently ignoring his success, throughout the 50s Japanese banks continued to turn Honda down for loans to expand his business. In the early 60s the Japanese government forbade him to enter the automobile industry and put up roadblocks to make sure he couldn't. Honda ignored everyone and built his business as he saw fit.
He never attended a board meeting of his company; he felt he'd be getting in the way. When he got bored in R & D, Honda would put on a lab coat and build motorcycles on the assembly line with his workers. He overcame his drinking problem.
A little over a year ago, I was talking with my friend David McDavid, who had once met Honda at a dinner party. McDavid told me how Honda had walked around the room, serving the dinner wine to his dealers. Uncomfortable at having this automotive legend doing the work of a waiter, McDavid suggested that the dealers in fact should be catering to the elderly Mr. Honda.
Honda replied, "No, I exist because of you and your dedication. You would still exist without me." And the founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda himself, proceeded to pour McDavid's wine.
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