Honda Motor Co., Ltd SuccessStory
The Honda Motor Company was founded by Soichiro Honda in October 1946. He was very interested in automobiles from a small age so he used to tune cars and enter them into races using his friend’s garage. As he grew up he decided to be in the automobile industry. Soon his efforts paid off and he got a contract for supplying piston rings for major car maker Toyota. But unfortunately he lost the contract as his products did not match the required quality. So he went to various factories in Japan looking for ways to improve the quality of the engines by making efficient piston rings.
Soon he was able to find a highly automated process that could use unskilled workers to produce high quality piston rings. Toyota was impressed by his product and bought it in 1941. Next he started a company called Tokai Seiki in order to produce his products at a larger scale. Soon Toyota bought 40% of the company and thus Soichiro and the officials at Toyota could built a lasting business relation. But a series of calamities damaged large portions of his company and this forced Soichiro to sell the remaining parts of his company to Toyota. In 1946 he founded Honda Technical Research Institute to sell customised bicycles with attached motors. He had only 12 employees who worked in a 170 sq ft. area.
In 1949, after years of persistence Honda and his team were able to release the Model D which was the first complete motorcycle they had made with their own parts. Soon the demand for this low priced vehicle increased and by 1964 the Honda Company was the World’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles. They did not stop there but tried out different possibilities in that time period. In 1963, they were able to release their first ever four wheel vehicle in the form of the T360 mini pick-up truck.
Soon they went on to expand their range of vehicles and they produced their first car called the S500 Sports Car. In 1986 they ventured into luxury car segment and released the very successful Acura. In 1991 they released the Honda NSX Supercar which was the first vehicle to incorporate the V6 engine with the latest variable-valve timing. Their success had no limits here after as they kept innovating and started producing scooters, engines, generators, motors and pumps successfully.
Honda has the reputation of being the largest producer of internal combustion engines reaching an impressive figure of 15 million in 2012. It also is the eighth biggest automobile manufacturer in the world, an industry into which it had a very late entry. In 2012, Honda had more than $99 billion in revenues out of which $3 was the yearly profit. It has more than 175,000 employees located in various parts of the World. As of 2013 it has released more than thirty models of cars bettering its performance year after year.
From producing noisy scooters to making the finest cars on the planet, Honda has come a long way in evolving as a company. It has been on the verge of sell out but has come back strongly to cement itself as one of the biggest players in the international automobile market. It has held its reputation of being the World’s largest motorcycle manufacture since it claimed that position in1964. Today you cannot see many roads without seeing a Honda made vehicle pass by. Honda has gone on to become a global superpower in the automobile industry.
- Full Name :
- Honda Motor Co., Ltd
- Founded :
- 1948
- Founder :
- Soichiro Honda
- CEO :
- Takahiro Hachigo
- Industry :
- Automobile
- Sector :
- Public
- Country :
- Japan
- Website :
- world.honda.com
