Word: soichiro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...great night for Soichiro Honda, 82, founder of the company that bears his name. Before an audience of 800 auto-industry elite in Detroit last week, Honda was the first Japanese carmaker to be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, where his name will join those of Henry Ford and Walter P. Chrysler. "As I stand here, it feels as if I am standing on a cloud," said Kaminari-san, or Mr. Thunder, as he is known to his workers. His company has put 1.4 million American-made Hondas on the road and sold 5.1 million imports since...
...heady time indeed for a firm that Merrill Lynch, the brokerage house, calls "one of the most unusual and creative of all Japanese industrial concerns." Started with 20 employees in 1948 by an inventive garage mechanic, Soichiro Honda (now 79 and retired), the company took only twelve years to claim the title of the world's leading motorcycle and motor- scooter maker. Honda introduced its first car in the Japanese market in 1963, and now manufactures an array of products that range from outboard motors to snowblowers and lawn mowers. Its profits zoomed to a record $532 million...
...philosophy and advice. In the early 1960s, MITI tried to persuade the then ten Japanese automakers to merge into two companies: Toyota and Nissan. Only one complied, joining Nissan. Later in the decade, MITI wanted to keep Honda, the motorcycle firm, out of the auto business But Soichiro Honda, the company's legendary founder, who was known as Old Man Thunder, defied the government, brought out his minicars and built the firm into Japan's third largest auto manufacturer behind Toyota and Nissan. In industries that are growing, MITI has been unable to curb competition...
...imports, as Britain, France and Italy have done over the past several years. Admits Kawashima: "I would be less than candid if I said I had felt no pressure from the U.S." That observation is in keeping with the principles of the company's founder and "supreme adviser," Soichiro Honda, 73, who was fond of expounding: "When we do business around the world, we have no choice but to stick to the philosophy of give and take." Until now, the U.S. has been doing the giving, but Honda's move could signal a change...