Soichiro Honda

Biography

Soichiro Honda was born on 17 November 1906 in Kōmyō, near Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. From 1922 he spent six years as an apprentice mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, and in 1928 he opened his own repair business. In 1936 he raced a turbocharged Ford at the first Japan Automobile Race, was badly injured and gave up racing.

In 1937 he founded Tōkai Seiki to make piston rings for Toyota. After the war he sold what was left of it to Toyota and used the money to open the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. followed in 1948 with the Type A motorised bicycle; the 1949 Type D began the Dream motorcycle series, and the same year he hired Takeo Fujisawa.

Honda opened its first US motorcycle dealership in 1959 and moved into cars with the T360 in June 1963 — its first production automobile, four months ahead of the S500 sports car. Soichiro Honda retired as president in 1973, staying on as a director, and died in Tokyo on 5 August 1991. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1989.