The Calm Before the Storm: Read the Influential Story of Soichiro Honda

Many of us go through a lot of hardships in life. Some of us get out of it alive, some of us don’t, but some turn it into a glorious story. Today, we are going to discuss the inspirational success story of Soichiro Honda who moved from being a poor failed student to a wealthy genius.

Who is Soichiro Honda?

Honda was born on November 17, 1906, in a village in the remote Japanese prefecture of Hamamatsu into a large family suffering from extreme poverty. It is said that due to the poverty of his family, five of his younger brothers died successively as a result of lack of food and “malnutrition” diseases, and his father was a thin blacksmith repairing bicycles for pedestrians on the highway. 

At the beginning of his life, he was not a diligent person, but he was a failed student who evaded his homework, and he preferred to walk in the streets to see cars and machinery rather than go to school. Cars became his first love, and Honda said about that later: “I froze in front of the first car I saw in my life. I think that at this moment I had the idea of ​​inventing the car of my design, even though I was a failed student in those days!

Honda is known to hate the education system and schools in their current form. Since his childhood, he believed that the school system killed creativity and invention. Instead, he prefers the “trial and error” method of learning, and this is exactly what happened. Soichiro left school at the age of 15 and then left his village. Heading to the capital, “Tokyo”, where he resided permanently, he worked in shops and then worked in a car repair shop for 6 years. Also, he learned many trade secrets during that period, and lived a subsistence life to save the money needed to start his own business before borrowing from banks to open his first auto repair shop in 1928.

Soichiro’s Greatest Achievements:

Honda's journey began at the age of twenty when he presented his "piston ring" to Toyota, but the company needed large quantities and could not buy piece by piece, which forced Honda to establish a small factory to manufacture piston rings. Despite the great difficulties he experienced in licensing the factory due to poor government resources and refusal to supply him with cement, he did not give up.Rather, Honda and his team devised a method to manufacture cement locally and built the factory after many months of struggle.

In the same year, he obtained a patent for his design of metal brakes for cars after they were made of wood, and this idea was his first starting point in the world of innovation, where he registered more than 470 innovations and 150 patents in his name.

In 1938, Honda began designing innovative auto parts, including pistons, for the Japanese company Toyota. The Second World War that Japan entered had begun, and in that period Honda established a small factory to do this work for the benefit of companies. However, one of the "Allied" bombs hit the factory and shut it down.

He did not find the raw materials needed for the manufacture of spare parts, so a genius idea came to his mind, as he got up again and recruited his team. So, they began to collect empty cans of gasoline that American fighters disposed of during the war, and he called these cans "President Truman gifts" because they provided him with materials The priority it needs for its industrial operations. These materials were not available in Japan at that time.

Through his factory, Honda supervised the production of valves ordered by Toyota and came close to success. Meanwhile, in the happy anticipation of witnessing the first production of the factory, an earthquake occurred and destroyed the factory. Thus, the 39-year-old inventor suffered one disaster after another.

As a result of the total destruction around him, Honda became after a bitter struggle completely destitute, but he was able to stand on his feet again after entering the motorcycle market by chance. Honda suffered from oil shortages in Nolken, and despite the resounding success of Soichiro in the world of motorcycles, his dream still haunted him. Because of the large number of car factories in the country, Soichiro did not care about all these obstacles; Indeed, Honda achieved his dream in 1970, and he was able to race and invent the car with an engine that preserves the environment (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) and is compatible with the specifications of the US government. In 1975, the first car with a Civic engine - meaning "civilian car" - was announced, and this car was able to occupy a prominent place in the car market. It also took the lead, and in late 1973 and early 1974, when the first global oil crisis occurred, Japanese car companies decided to reduce production and raise car prices, but Soichiro was revolutionary and bold with his decisions and did not follow the same policy. On the contrary, he increased from producing cars and reducing their prices. In fact, his decision was the right one, as he was the only one who overcame this crisis, and his sales rose to about 76%, and this percentage continued to rise. In 1983, his company became one of the largest car companies in the whole world, and it outlasted all its competitors. Also, Soichiro Honda was able during his struggle and success to register more than 150 patents and 470 inventions. At the end of the world war, he could not drive his car, so he needed to connect his bicycle to a small generator found in factory waste, and he was working on kerosene that was available at that time in abundance.

This invention won the admiration of his friends, so they asked him to design 12 motorcycles of this type. Honda realized that there was a large market for his invention, but he did not find enough money to establish a factory to produce them. He planned to appeal to the 18,000 owners of bike shops in Japan to come to his aid, and he wrote them letter after letter telling them that he sought to play a role in rebuilding a devastated Japan again through the power of movement that his invention could provide. He managed to convince 5,000 of these sellers to provide the necessary capital for him, so he established his second company in 1948, and he obtained a patent for a motorcycle design.

By 1958, the Honda plant had become the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan. This innovative bike attracted thousands of teenagers. It was a quantum leap in this field, and its price was reasonable, so millions of people of different ages all over the world rushed to buy a Honda motorcycle.

The company's prosperity began in 1961, and it shipped 100,000 bikes to the United States annually, and in 1968, the total number of bikes shipped to America reached one million bikes. In the mid-1980s, Honda had captured 60 percent of the global market share of bikes simply because they were "affordable."

Honda’s Personal Life:

Honda had two sons and two daughters from his wife, Sachi Honda, who died in 2013. Before his marriage, he was known to be a womanizer. In his work and factory, he was called the Storm Man, for he would rage when any of his servants did a foolish thing, and he was impatient, but he was so ambitious, and his resolve was so strong that there was no place for giving up or despair in his life. In one of the races he won, he almost lost his life, as he loved to take risks, and drove the race car in a crazy way that almost ended his life. He stayed in the hospital for three months after a race car crash, and then doctors prevented him from participating in any further races. At the age of sixty, he learned to fly a helicopter. According to the statistics of Car & Track magazine in the years 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992, the Honda Accord got the honor of the first place among the best-selling cars in the world, and it occupied the best position in the United States of America, in 1993.

Finally:

Honda taught us that poverty should never stand in the way of success. You are the only one to decide what your future will be, so your best bet is to always keep your hopes high, work hard, and keep moving forward.