Word: honda
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Salvage Artist. The man behind Honda's meteoric rise is balding, energetic Soichi Honda, 55. A blacksmith's son, Honda quit school to become an auto mechanic, by 27 had his own garage with 50 helpers. Before World War II, he switched over to manufacturing piston rings, but his business faltered-which he blamed on his own lack of schooling. To salvage his firm, Honda enrolled in a technical school at night, continued to run the business by day. The company soon got on its feet, only to be knocked flat by a U.S. air raid...
...Honda bought a supply of small surplus motors that had been designed for the portable communications equipment used by the defeated Imperial army, began to adapt the engines to power ordinary bicycles. With Japanese transport facilities still knocked out by the war, the motorized bicycle scored such a hit that Honda soon found himself unable to keep up with demand...
...Labman. On the strength of the bicycle boom, Honda set up the Honda Motor Co. with capital of only $2,778, and five years later began to produce motorcycles. Today Honda Motor Co. is capitalized at $25 million, employs 6,000 workers in its three plants on Japan's main island of Honshu. The Honda family controls 15% of the company's stock, the firm's employees hold another 30%, and the remaining 55% is publicly held...
Affectionately dubbed "Oyaji'' ("Pop") by his employees, Honda spends more time in the research lab than he does at his desk, tests most of the new models* himself at the company's Yamato City testing grounds. He sees no limit to the potential sales of his precision-built machines. "If you produce a good thing, it will be wanted," he says. "And it will be wanted by people in any country...
...Honda sells eight models ranging from a $245, 5-h.p. machine (50 cc., two valves, one cylinder) to a $665, 27.4-h.p. bike (305 cc., eight valves, two cylinders...