Honda Motor Company Ltd., founded on October 1946 in Hamamatsu, Japan, is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in manufacturing of automobiles, commercial vehicles, luxury vehicles, motorcycles, scooters, electric generators, water pumps, lawn or garden equipment, rotary tillers, outboard motors, robotics, jet aircraft, jet engines, thin-film solar cells, and internal.
It serves it’s facilities worldwide. Its headquarters is in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It manufactures products for intelligence and robotics research since 1986. They made an ASIMO robot and released it in 2000. It has also expanded its horizon into aerospace and manufactured products like GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and Honda HA-420 HondaJet in 2012. Honda was the first Japanese company to export products to the U.S.A. It exported around 108,705 products and imported 88,357 products. It has about 215,638 employees working under it.
Inception
Honda was founded by Soichiro Honda, who was a fan of automobiles from an early age. His first job was at Art Shokai garage as a mechanic. He used to fix cars, later used for racing in his first job. He wanted to work more with automobiles and make this as his career. So, he formed a company, along with Kata Shichiro, where he made piston rings and supplied it to the company Toyota. He named the company as Tokai Seiki. The company faced some failures initially, but by 1941, it became very successful and delivered a large number of piston rings to Toyota.
Tokai Seiki faced many difficulties during its working days. Toyota claimed a 40% stake of the company, which led to the demotion of Soichiro Honda from the president’s post to the post of Senior managing director. The major setback was when the company’s Yamashita plant destroyed because of a bomb attack in 1944.
Later, the Itawa plant got damaged due to the infamous Milawa earthquake on 13th January 1945. The remains were sold to Toyota at the rate of 450,000 yen. However, Honda didn’t lose hope, and with the help of the money that he got from Toyota, he started a new research institute in October 1946 known as Honda Technical Research Institute.
Honda started with only 12 working men, and all of them worked in a 16-meter square room. Initially, they only manufactured motorized bicycles. Honda also built its engines when its 500 two-stroke 50cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines ran out.
They even sold thee engines to their customers. The driver was named Honda A-Type. Honda then appointed Kihachiro Kawashima and Takeo Fujisawa, who were engineers. Their hand-work and their understanding of the machinery helped the company’s sales. However, their partnership broke in October 1973.
They made their first complete motorcycle, 1949 D-Type, in 1949. They built the complete bike with both its frame and engine. The T360 mini pick-up truck, which was the first production automobile from the company, was brought into the market in August 1983. Two months after the release of T360, in October 1983, they released their first production car, S500 sports car, which has chain-driven wheels. In no time, Honda Motor Company got a lot of success and also named the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles in 1964.
Evolution
Honda started to expand its horizon and wanted to introduce it’s products to the American market to become more successful. So, he released Acura into the American market in 1986. It later published the first all-aluminum monocoque vehicle called Honda NSX supercar in 1991. After the death of Soichiro Honda, Irimajiri, who was the CEO of the company, resigned due to health problems.
Honda landed in hot water after that. They were unable to cope with the sudden boom of trucks and sport utility vehicles in the 1990s. Kawamoto, who was appointed the new CEO after Irimajiri, was tensed as he thought that the company would soon be replaced by it’s rival Mitsubishi Motors. Kawamoto worked hard for putting Honda into the limelight again, and he got success in it.
Honda started its own air fact company, called Honda Aircraft Company, in 1995. Takahiro Hachigo replaced CEO and President Takanobu Ito in June 2015. Recently, Honda merged with Hitachi in October 2019.
Awards & Achievements
Honda is one of the oldest automobile companies and has achieved many things during its working course. It was named the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer in 1959 and the world’s largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines as they produced more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda, also placed in the second position in the criteria of the nation’s largest automobile manufacturer in 2001. It was named the world’s eighth-largest automobile manufacturer in 2015.
Net Worth of Honda in 2024
As of April 2024, Honda had a net worth of more than $200 billion. Honda is one of the fastest-growing automobile company, and it won’t take much time for it to surpass its current net worth, which is a lot.
Honda Motor Company is a Japanese automobile company that produces a variety of products and is one of the fastest-growing automobile company. It has faced many difficulties since it’s inception but has tackled every single one of them impressively. It has a huge demand in both the Japanese and American markets.