When most of us consider Honda’s founding, we consider the Japanese juggernaut’s namesake—Soichiro Honda. Nevertheless, there was one other important ingredient within the Honda recipe, and one which modified motorcycling in America—Takeo Fujisawa. Recognizing Fujisawa’s contribution to motoring, he has been inducted into the Automotive Corridor of Fame in Detroit.
Fujisawa was a salesman at a lumber firm in August 1949 when he met Honda, who had based Honda Motor a yr earlier in Hamamatsu. The Honda Dream D-Kind, the primary authentic bike from the corporate, was model new. The 2 hit it off, and two months later, Fujisawa turned Honda’s right-hand man at Honda Motor.
With Honda caring for product design, growth, and manufacturing, Fujisawa targeted on enterprise and advertising and marketing duties.
In 1959, Fujisawa was Honda’s Senior Managing Director, and he made the choice to increase Honda past Japan. After contemplating coming into Asian markets, Fujisawa picked America to be Honda Motor’s first international subsidiary.
“To reach the U.S. is to succeed worldwide,” Fujisawa noticed on the time. “To take up the problem of the American market often is the most tough factor to do, however it’s a vital step in increasing the export of our merchandise.”
With that, American Honda was created. As an alternative of following the usual apply of working with an American importer, American Honda developed its personal vendor community in america. It solely took till the mid-Nineteen Sixties for Honda to prime the American bike gross sales charts.
Fujisawa additionally spearheaded the transfer to create Honda R&D as a stand-alone firm. The aim was to provide engineers a spot to work on future improvements, moderately than engaged on short-term manufacturing challenges. This was carried out to arrange Honda Motor for the inevitable retirement of growth genius Soichiro Honda.
In March 1973, Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa retired concurrently, having labored collectively for almost a quarter-century. Fujisawa died in 1988, and Honda Motor Firm Chairman Seiji Kuraishi attended the Automotive Corridor of Fame induction as a consultant of the Fujisawa household. “The spirit and imaginative and prescient of Takeo Fujisawa continues to information Honda,” stated Kuraishi. “Our enterprise in America could have began with the Tremendous Cub bike, however because of his imaginative and prescient, it continues with new varieties of mobility, together with the HondaJet.”
