Honda releases cool animation reminiscing its early days in making motorcycles

The World War II or the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. At the end of the war, Japan lay in ruins. A year later, Soichiro Honda, an engineer from Japan decided to open the Honda Technical Research Institute in Yamshita-cho, Hamamatsu. The 39-year-old engineer first tried to build a rotary weaver to get in on the textiles boom, but soon ran out of funds. However, he hit gold when he came to know through his sources that there were stacks of radio generators at the army surplus. What could one do with radio generators then? Keep reading.

Honda thought of putting these radio generators to some good use, but he wondered where. While walking back home he constantly kept thinking that if he succeeded in putting these engines to some use he could make some real money, when suddenly a man passed him by on a bicycle. The 39-year-old thought of his wife, Sachi, who then struggled on her bicycle each day to get her daily essentials. That’ it, this was an eureka moment for the engineer! He was struck with the idea of mounting the engine to a bicycle and making a motorcycle.

Honda drew the shape of the engine and called in a workman asking him to build them. Soon the 39-year-old engineer debuted his first Bicycle-Assist Auxiliary Engine, and mounted it to the bicycle. He was confident that these bicycles would sell and will take the country by storm. He hired ten more workmen so that he could build more engines. This team could make one engine a day and for every batch of ten engines that the workers made Honda poured drinks to all of his workers and celebrated.

Engines in those days were hard to use and one of the reasons was the low quality of the engine oil. To start up an engine, one first had to warm up the oil, then pedal it at least 30 times. But, despite these shortcomings Honda’s bicycles still sold well as people needed a new way to move around.  

Kiyoshi Kawashima, who later became the President of Honda Motor Co between 1973-88 joined in the company after a meeting with Honda. The young Kawashima had then graduated from the Hamamatsu Technical College and was passionate about building bicycles. Honda could not afford to pay an engineering graduate a monthly salary then. But, the young engineer’s passion with the machines was such that he refused to care about the pay and insisted that he built the bicycles. So impressed was Honda with this young man’s determination that he asked Kawashima to join immediately the next day. 

All the 500 radio engines were used up in the first year and it was time for Honda to design new engines. Honda’s engine had a strange shape. It was topped by a long tube, which they called the chimney engine. This engine was released in July, 1947, but it still needed work. 

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Honda improved upon it and made the A-Type engine. This engine boasted a displacement of 50cc and a power output of 0.5PS! At a time when the factory was small and the technology was primitive, Honda had the zeal to make his dreams a success. He dreamt of being the No 1 bikemaker in the world. 

The company which started off producing 0.5PS motorcycles are today the reigning MotoGP champions, thereby showcasing their tremendous progress over the past 50 years.