Soichiro Honda

Soichiro Honda (November 17, 1906 – August 5, 1991) was a self-taught mechanic who built a successful wartime manufacturing business, watched it be destroyed within a single year, and then founded one of the world’s largest vehicle companies from the wreckage. In 1937 he established Tokai Seiki to make piston rings, eventually supplying Toyota; by World War II it was a substantial industrial operation employing thousands.

The fall came in 1944 and 1945. A U.S. B-29 bombing raid destroyed the Yamashita plant in 1944, and the 1945 Mikawa earthquake collapsed the Iwata plant. With his facilities in ruins, Honda sold what remained of Tokai Seiki to Toyota for about 450,000 yen in 1945 and walked away from the company he had built.

After what he called a “human rest period” of roughly a year, Honda re-entered manufacturing. In October 1946 he founded the Honda Technical Research Institute and began bolting small surplus engines onto bicycles to create cheap motorized transport for a fuel-starved, war-ruined Japan. In 1948 he incorporated Honda Motor Co., Ltd., and in 1949 partnered with businessman Takeo Fujisawa, who handled finance and sales while Honda focused on engineering.

That division of labor powered an extraordinary ascent. The Super Cub of 1958 became the best-selling motor vehicle in history, Honda grew into the world’s largest motorcycle maker, then broke into automobiles and, in the early 1980s, became the first Japanese automaker to manufacture cars in the United States. Honda died in 1991, his name on engines and vehicles across the globe.