John Wheeler rode his first Honda in the mid-1950s, they and he have come a long way since then
Back in the mid-1950s when I started motorcycling, British bikes were said to be "the best". Not that there was much else to choose from.
It was considered wholly natural and appropriate that such machines were temperamental, that they needed constant tinkering, your hands would never be clean, they leaked oil and had hardly improved in design or performance in the previous 20 years.
Needing cheap transport to avoid a four-mile walk across mountain pathways I bought a elderly Honda Cub 90 which showed all the signs of studious neglect. I reckoned, for what it cost me, that if it ran for a month I would be ahead of the game. Three years later it was still going strong.
Meanwhile a friend insisted I "had a go" on his Honda 400/4. It was nothing short of a revelation. I had to concede that this "Jap stuff", or "rice burners" as most of us had derided them, were in a class many of us had never expected. Compared to what I was used to it did seem a bit bland, it just did all that was asked of it without fuss or protest.
Needing a machine every day for transport, not having to cosset it, not forever wondering "will it or won't it start" was a welcome experience. Even so, I did wonder if these were "real" motorcycles?
Since then, more by accident than design, with the occasional Italian lapse, I note that I've hardly ever been without a Honda, for the better part of a million miles.
The name "Honda" has become synonymous with motorcycles. More than a third of all motorcycles in Ireland are Hondas. Fifty years ago hardly anyone had heard the name, yet now they dominate the market with the largest and most varied range of machines. As their famous advertisement claimed "You meet the nicest people on a Honda".
In the aftermath of the second World War Japan was devastated, its society in tatters, the population starving and city dwellers had to travel to the country to find food. Soichiro Honda, a hard-up engineer, bought 200 war-surplus generators and attached them to bicycles which became a "must have" for the black marketeers. From this modest beginning Honda's home village of Komo was rapidly transformed into an industrial sprawl.
Soichiro is a far cry from the perceived image of a Japanese entrepreneur. He was something of a tearaway who liked to party, drink, gamble and always wore garish clothes. He had a passion for engineering excellence and an obsession with producing the best possible motorcycles. Born in 1906 the son of a blacksmith he started a piston ring manufacturing business in 1937, sold it after the war to Toyota and took a year off. His vision was to link the highest-quality of engineering and mass production with user friendliness.
Staring in 1948 with just 34 employees, he produced his first complete machine the 1949 Model D "Dream". This had a pressed steel frame, a 98 cc two-stroke engine and two-speed gearbox. Hardly a sophisticated specification but, at a time when others were producing bolt-on engines for push bikes it was an important first step.
Shortly afterwards he took Takeo Fujisawa into partnership; Soichiro concentrating on design, Takeo being the business brains setting up an extensive sales network. In an attempt to produce transport for the masses Honda produced the "Cub": a refinement of the pre-war "autocycle", it stayed in production for over 50 years and sold in tens of millions.
Over the years Honda produced hundreds of motorcycles and scooters: currently, 10 scooters and mopeds, and 34 motorcycles are featured in their range. Many models, like the "Cub" helped make the Honda name. Honda's CB 72, their four-stroke CG 125, the CB 450, the CB 750, the CX 500 - a water-cooled, vee-twin with shaft drive, the "Fireblade", the ST 1100 Pan European and a succession of Gold Wings are just some of their better-known creations, typifying an extensive range which illustrates the philosophy of "making the machines the people want".
Honda's determination to get it right was vital. In European markets most manufacturers were working with old designs produced on machinery worn out by years of three-shift wartime production. The resultant products were, frankly, no match for the precision engineered oil-tight offerings from Japan which often had twice the performance. In the late 1950s and early '60s their racing success in TT races astounded the traditionalists.
IN 1979 Honda produced the CB 750, an in-line four-cylinder overhead camshaft engined model delivering 67 bhp, fitted with disk brakes which became the first "superbike". By then the British industry, for long the world leader in motorcycle production was down to a mere 10 per cent of world production.
Awareness of the customers' needs, innovation, performance, attention to detail, reliability, high standards of finish and together with a range of machines to suit virtually every demand lie behind Honda's success. They have set the standards and pace by which, today, all bike manufacturers are judged.
Honda machines are consistent with Soichiro Honda's dream of the "perfect machine, 120 per cent production quality". Even their competitors concede that "Mr Honda makes exceedingly nice machines".