Honda

Honda Motor Co., Ltd., usually shortened to Honda, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate that makes cars and other vehicles. Its headquarters are in the Toranomon Alcea Tower in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo, Japan.

Soichiro Honda founded the company in October 1946. Since 1959, Honda has been the world’s top motorcycle manufacturer, and by May 2025 it had produced 500 million motorcycles. It is also the global leader in making internal combustion engines, turning out over 14 million of them each year. In 2001, Honda became Japan’s second-largest carmaker. As of 2026, its market capitalization is estimated at around US$32 billion, and it ranks as the world’s eighth-largest automobile manufacturer. The Honda Super Cub is the most-produced motor vehicle in history, and Honda built and sold every one of them.

Honda was the first Japanese automaker to launch a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in March 1986. Beyond cars and motorcycles, the company makes garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft, power generators, and other products. Since 1986, it has worked on artificial intelligence and robotics, unveiling its ASIMO robot in 2000. It moved into aerospace by forming GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and starting production of the Honda HA-420 HondaJet in 2012. In China, Honda operates four joint ventures: Dongfeng Honda, GAC Honda, Wuyang Honda, and Sundiro Honda.

In 2013, Honda spent about 5.7% of its revenue—US$6.8 billion—on research and development. That same year, it became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, shipping out 108,705 Honda and Acura models while importing only 88,357.

**History**

Founder Soichiro Honda (1906–1991) had always been fascinated by cars. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, tuning vehicles and racing them. In 1937, with money from an acquaintance named Kato Shichirō, he started Tōkai Seiki (Eastern Sea Precision Machine Company) to make piston rings, operating out of the Art Shokai garage. Early attempts failed, and Tōkai Seiki lost a contract with Toyota because the piston rings were poor quality. Honda then attended engineering school (without graduating) and toured Japanese factories to learn Toyota’s “five whys” quality-control method. By 1941, he could mass-produce piston rings that met Toyota’s standards, using an automated process that even unskilled wartime laborers could handle.

During World War II, Tōkai Seiki came under the control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (renamed the Ministry of Munitions in 1943). After Toyota took a 40% stake in the company, Soichiro Honda was demoted from president to senior managing director. He also helped the war effort by automating the production of military aircraft propellers for other companies. The connections he made with people at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company, and the Imperial Japanese Navy proved valuable after the war.

In 1944, a US B-29 bomber destroyed Tōkai Seiki’s Yamashita plant, and the Itawa plant collapsed during the 1945 Mikawa earthquake on January 13. After the war, Soichiro Honda sold the company’s salvageable remains to Toyota for ¥450,000. With that money, he founded the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946.

Working with a dozen staff in a 16-square-meter shack, they built and sold makeshift motorized bicycles, using 500 two-stroke 50 cc engines from Tohatsu war-surplus radio generators. When those engines ran out, Honda started making their own copies of the Tohatsu engine and selling them to people to attach to bicycles. This was the Honda A-Type, nicknamed Bata Bata for the noise it made. In 1949, the institute was liquidated for ¥1,000,000 (about US$5,000 today), and that money was used to incorporate Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Around the same time, Honda hired engineer Kihachiro Kawashima and Takeo Fujisawa, who brought essential business and marketing skills to balance Soichiro Honda’s technical focus. The partnership between Honda and Fujisawa lasted until they both stepped down in October 1973.

Honda’s first complete motorcycle—with both frame and engine made in-house—was the 1949 D-Type, called the Dream. In 1961, Honda won its first Grand Prix races and World Championships in the 125 cc and 250 cc classes. By 1964, the company had become the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer.

Honda’s first production car was the T360 mini pick-up truck, released in August 1963. It had a small 356 cc straight-4 gasoline engine and fell under the cheaper Kei car tax category. The second car was the S500 sports car, which came out in October 1963. Its chain-driven rear wheels reflected Honda’s motorcycle roots.

Over the following decades, Honda expanded its product lineup, operations, and exports worldwide. In 1986, it launched the Acura brand in the United States to compete in the luxury market. In 1991, Honda introduced the NSX supercar, the first vehicle with an all-aluminum monocoque body and a mid-mounted V6 engine with variable-valve timing.

In 1990, CEO Tadashi Kume was succeeded by Nobuhiko Kawamoto. Kawamoto was chosen over Shoichiro Irimajiri, who had led the successful establishment of Honda of America Manufacturing in Marysville, Ohio. Irimajiri and Kawamoto had a friendly rivalry within the company, but due to health problems, Irimajiri resigned in 1992.