Soichiro Honda was a Japanese engineer and industrialist.
17 Facts About Soichiro Honda
2.
Soichiro Honda spent his early childhood helping his father, Gihei Honda, a blacksmith, with his bicycle repair business.
3.
Soichiro Honda's school handed grade reports to the children, but required that they be returned stamped with the family seal, to make sure that a parent had seen it.
4.
Soichiro Honda created a stamp to forge his family seal out of a used rubber bicycle pedal cover.
5.
Soichiro Honda was unaware that the stamp was supposed to be mirror-imaged.
6.
Soichiro Honda once borrowed one of his father's bicycles to see a demonstration of an airplane made by pilot Art Smith, which cemented his love for machinery and invention.
7.
At 15, without any formal education, Soichiro Honda left home and headed to Tokyo to look for work.
8.
Soichiro Honda obtained an apprenticeship at a garage in 1922.
9.
Soichiro Honda raced a turbocharged Ford in the "1st Japan Automobile Race" at Tamagawa Speedway in 1936.
10.
In 1937, Soichiro Honda founded Tokai Seiki to produce piston rings for Toyota.
11.
In 1948 he started producing a complete motorized bicycle, the Type A, which was driven by the first mass-produced engine designed by Soichiro Honda, and was sold until 1951.
12.
In 1949, Soichiro Honda hired Fujisawa, who oversaw the financial side of the company and helped the firm expand.
13.
In 1959, Soichiro Honda Motorcycles opened its first dealership in the United States.
14.
Soichiro Honda remained president until his retirement in 1973, where he stayed on as director and was appointed "supreme advisor" in 1983.
15.
Soichiro Honda enjoyed skiing, golf, racing cars, hang gliding and ballooning at 77, and he was a highly accomplished artist.
16.
Soichiro Honda died on August 5,1991, days before the Hungarian Grand Prix, of liver failure.
17.
Soichiro Honda was posthumously appointed to the senior third rank in the order of precedence and appointed a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.