Soichiro Honda was the son of a blacksmith. When he was three years old, his father gave him a pair of pliers. It remained his favorite possession. He became an auto mechanic and by the time he was 21 had opened a garage where he became known as the man who could fix anything.

      Honda was not only a fixer, he was also a creator. He put an old airplane engine into an auto chassis and had a racing car that nobody could beat. He designed his own piston rings and by World War II had developed the finest piston rings in Japan. Near the end of the war, a bomb destroyed his factory. He was then 41, with almost all his money gone.

      Honda began looking for other ventures. He purchased 500 small war-surplus gasoline engines that had been used to power communications equipment. He mounted these on standard bicycles. While crude and difficult to start, they sold rapidly in a country with little transportation. After the engines were gone, Honda designed and built his own engine, and later also began producing frames and wheels. By 1949 his plant was manufacturing all the basic components and was assembling Honda motorcycles. In 1950 Honda produced 3,600 motorcycles. In 1959, Soichiro Honda decided to invade the American motorcycle market.

      Honda's introduction of the lightweight motorcycle in the United States did not have a very auspicious beginning: Only 167 units were sold during the first year. Motorcycle experts laughed at the puny Japanese machines. But such derision and skepticism was to change quickly. In 1960 sales were 22 100 units, increasing in only five years to 270,000 units in 1965. By 1965 Honda had 80 percent of the expanding U.S. market.

      Soichiro Honda's philosophy has been widely stated:

      If you turn out a superior product, it will be patronized by the public. Our policy is not simply to turn out a product because there is demand, but to turn out a superior product and create a demand. (Journal of Commerce 1965, p. 23)

      Honda wanted to promote the idea that riding a motorcycle is fun. A basic theme of the advertising in the early 1960s was "Holidays and Honda days," and "Go happy, go Honda." To promote the theme Honda had to buck the negative perceptions of motorcyclists as the black-leather jacketed characters widely publicized in a continuing negative press. Most Americans had never ridden on or driven a motorcycle, and the negative image of motorcyclists stood in the way of Honda, who wanted to attract a large new market.

      Social acceptance was finally achieved by heavy promotion of the theme, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." One ad read:

      You meet the nicest people on a Honda. It's largely a question of personality. A Honda is easygoing, dependable. Makes few demands. Prices start at around $215. And it runs all day on a nickel's worth of gasoline. That's the kind of friend to have. Frugal. How about one in your family? World's biggest seller.

      Despite the quiet tone of this ad, it puts over the Honda story through words like "nice," "easygoing," "friend," "family," and "frugal."

      Honda was even careful to shy away from words that had a negative connotation. For example, headgears were not called "crash helmets," which conveyed something negative and rather fearful, but were called "safetywear." And the word "motorcycle" was never used in an advertisement because it was still thought to have a negative image; instead the Hondas were described as "two-wheeled motoring sport."

      Honda invaded the U.S. market with lightweight bikes that were as small as 50 cc., that could go miles on a thimbleful of gasoline, and that could be purchased for less than $300 when most of the other motorcycles cost $1500 and more. Furthermore, a customer had six snappy colors to choose from in three different models, at a time when most other motorcycle makers offered no more than two or three models and color choices. The little Hondas could go 55 miles per hour for 180 miles on 30 cents worth of regular gas. And the product quality was impressive. A top executive of a British motorcycle firm examined a Honda machine in 1961 and made a widely quoted statement: "When we stripped the machine, frankly, it was so good it frightened us. It was made like a watch, and it wasn't a copy of anything."

      Practically everything that Honda did during the 1960s escaped criticism. All the elements of the strategy seemed to mesh beautifully. There were a few servicing problems, during a period of the most rapid growth, but these were quickly identified and corrected.

      Honda was the precursor or trailblazer for the Japanese cars that were soon to flood the U.S. market, capitalizing on a growing public image of quality and economy.

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