as a manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles and power equipment.

Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's

largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more

than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda became the second-largest

Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer

in the world behind General Motors, Volkswagen Group, Toyota, Hyundai Motor Group, Ford,

Nissan, and PSA in 2011. Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer

to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile

and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal

watercraft and power generators, amongst others. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial

intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also

ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda

HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Honda has three joint-ventures in China.

In 2013, Honda invested about 5.7% of its revenues in research and development. Also

in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States,

exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models while importing only 88,357.

History As a young man, Honda's founder, Honda Sōichirō

had an interest in automobiles. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where

he tuned cars and entered them in races. In 1937, with financing from his acquaintance

Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki to make piston rings working out of the Art

Shokai garage. After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings

to Toyota, but lost the contract due to the poor quality of their products. After attending

engineering school without graduating, and visiting factories around Japan to better

understand Toyota's quality control processes, by 1941 Honda was able to mass-produce piston

rings acceptable to Toyota, using an automated process that could employ even unskilled wartime

laborers. Tōkai Seiki was placed under control of the

Ministry of Commerce and Industry at the start of World War II, and Soichiro Honda was demoted

from president to senior managing director after Toyota took a 40% stake in the company.

Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production

of military aircraft propellers. The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota,

Nakajima Aircraft Company and the Imperial Japanese Navy would be instrumental in the

postwar period. A US B-29 bomber attack destroyed Tōkai Seiki's Yamashita plant in 1944, and

the Itawa plant collapsed in the 1945 Mikawa earthquake, and Soichiro Honda sold the salvageable

remains of the company to Toyota after the war for ¥450,000, and used the proceeds to

found the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946. With a staff of 12 men working

in a 16 m2 shack, they built and sold improvised motorized bicycles, using a supply of 500

two-stroke 50 cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines. When the engines ran out,

Honda began building their own copy of the Tohatsu engine, and supplying these to customers

to attach their bicycles. This was the Honda Model A, nicknamed the Bata Bata for the sound

the engine made. In 1949, the Honda Technical Research Institute was liquidated for ¥1,000,000,

or about US$5,000 today; these funds were used to incorporate Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

At about the same time Honda hired engineer Kihachiro Kawashima, and Takeo Fujisawa who

provided indispensable business and marketing expertise to complement Soichiro Honda's technical

bent. The close partnership between Soichiro Honda and Fujisawa lasted until they stepped

down together in October 1973. The first complete motorcycle, with both the

frame and engine made by Honda, was the 1949 Model D, the first Honda to go by the name

Dream. Honda Motor Company grew in a short time to become the world's largest manufacturer

of motorcycles by 1964. The first production automobile from Honda

was the T360 mini pick-up truck, which went on sale in August 1963. Powered by a small

356-cc straight-4 gasoline engine, it was classified under the cheaper Kei car tax bracket.

The first production car from Honda was the S500 sports car, which followed the T360 into

production in October 1963. Its chain-driven rear wheels pointed to Honda's motorcycle

origins. Over the next few decades, Honda worked to

expand its product line and expanded operations and exports to numerous countries around the

world. In 1986, Honda introduced the successful Acura brand to the American market in an attempt

to gain ground in the luxury vehicle market. The year 1991 saw the introduction of the

Honda NSX supercar, the first all-aluminum monocoque vehicle that incorporated a mid-engine

V6 with variable-valve timing. CEO Tadashi Kume was succeeded by Nobuhiko

Kawamoto in 1990. Kawamoto was selected over Shoichiro Irimajiri, who oversaw the successful

establishment of Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc. in Marysville, Ohio. Both Kawamoto and

Irimajiri shared a friendly rivalry within Honda, and Irimajiri would resign in 1992

due to health issues. Following the death of Soichiro Honda and

the departure of Irimajiri, Honda found itself quickly being outpaced in product development

by other Japanese automakers and was caught off-guard by the truck and sport utility vehicle

boom of the 1990s, all which took a toll on the profitability of the company. Japanese

media reported in 1992 and 1993 that Honda was at serious risk of an unwanted and hostile

takeover by Mitsubishi Motors, who at the time was a larger automaker by volume and

flush with profits from their successful Pajero and Diamante.

Kawamoto acted quickly to change Honda's corporate culture, rushing through market-driven product

development that resulted in recreational vehicles such as the Odyssey and the CR-V,

and a refocusing away from some of the numerous sedans and coupes that were popular with Honda's

engineers but not with the buying public. The most shocking change to Honda came when

Kawamoto ended Honda's successful participation in Formula One after the 1992 season, citing

costs in light of the takeover threat from Mitsubishi as well as the desire to create

a more environmentally-friendly company image. Later, 1995 gave rise to the Honda Aircraft

Company with the goal of producing jet aircraft under Honda's name.

Corporate profile and divisions

Honda is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Their shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

and the New York Stock Exchange, as well as exchanges in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto,

Fukuoka, London, Paris and Switzerland. The company has assembly plants around the

globe. These plants are located in China, the United States, Pakistan, Canada, England,

Japan, Belgium, Brazil, México, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Thailand,

Vietnam, Turkey, Taiwan, Perú and Argentina. As of July 2010, 89 percent of Honda and Acura

vehicles sold in the United States were built in North American plants, up from 82.2 percent

a year earlier. This shields profits from the yen's advance to a 15-year high against

the dollar. Honda's Net Sales and Other Operating Revenue

by Geographical Regions in 2007 American Honda Motor Company is based in Torrance,

California. Honda Racing Corporation is Honda's motorcycle racing division. Honda Canada Inc.

is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, their manufacturing division, Honda of Canada Manufacturing,

is based in Alliston, Ontario. Honda has also created joint ventures around the world, such

as Honda Siel Cars and Hero Honda Motorcycles in India, Guangzhou Honda and Dongfeng Honda

in China, Boon Siew Honda in Malaysia and Honda Atlas in Pakistan.

Following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 Honda announced plans to halve

production at its UK plants. The decision was made to put staff at the Swindon plant

on a 2-day week until the end of May as the manufacturer struggled to source supplies

from Japan. It's thought around 22,500 cars were produced during this period.

Leadership Products

Automobiles

Honda's global lineup consists of the Fit, Civic, Accord, Insight, CR-V, CR-Z, Legend

and two versions of the Odyssey, one for North America, and a smaller vehicle sold internationally.

An early proponent of developing vehicles to cater to different needs and markets worldwide,

Honda's lineup varies by country and may have vehicles exclusive to that region. A few examples

are the latest Honda Odyssey minivan and the Ridgeline, Honda's first light-duty uni-body

pickup truck. Both were designed and engineered primarily in North America and are produced

there. Other example of exclusive models includes the Honda Civic five-door hatchback sold in

Europe. Honda's automotive manufacturing ambitions

can be traced back to 1963, with the Honda T360, a kei car truck built for the Japanese

market. This was followed by the two-door roadster, the Honda S500 also introduced in

1963. In 1965, Honda built a two-door commercial delivery van, called the Honda L700. Honda's

first four-door sedan was not the Accord, but the air-cooled, four-cylinder, gasoline-powered

Honda 1300 in 1969. The Civic was a hatchback that gained wide popularity internationally,

but it wasn't the first two-door hatchback built. That was the Honda N360, another Kei

car that was adapted for international sale as the N600. The Civic, which appeared in

1972 and replaced the N600 also had a smaller sibling that replaced the air-cooled N360,

called the Honda Life that was water-cooled. The Honda Life represented Honda's efforts

in competing in the kei car segment, offering sedan, delivery van and small pick-up platforms

on a shared chassis. The Life StepVan had a novel approach that, while not initially

a commercial success, appears to be an influence in vehicles with the front passengers sitting

behind the engine, a large cargo area with a flat roof and a liftgate installed in back,

and utilizing a transversely installed engine with a front-wheel-drive powertrain.

As Honda entered into automobile manufacturing in the late 1960s, where Japanese manufacturers

such as Toyota and Nissan had been making cars since before WWII, it appears that Honda

instilled a sense of doing things a little differently than its Japanese competitors.

Its mainstay products, like the Accord and Civic, have always employed front-wheel-drive

powertrain implementation, which is currently a long held Honda tradition. Honda also installed

new technologies into their products, first as optional equipment, then later standard,

like anti lock brakes, speed sensitive power steering, and multi-port fuel injection in

the early 1980s. This desire to be the first to try new approaches is evident with the

creation of the first Japanese luxury chain Acura, and was also evident with the all aluminum,

mid-engined sports car, the Honda NSX, which also introduced variable valve timing technology,

Honda calls VTEC. The Civic is a line of compact cars developed

and manufactured by Honda. In North America, the Civic is the second-longest continuously

running nameplate from a Japanese manufacturer; only its perennial rival, the Toyota Corolla,

introduced in 1968, has been in production longer. The Civic, along with the Accord and

Prelude, comprised Honda's vehicles sold in North America until the 1990s, when the model

lineup was expanded. Having gone through several generational changes, the Civic has become

larger and more upmarket, and it currently slots between the Fit and Accord.

Honda produces Civic hybrid, a hybrid electric vehicle that competes with the Toyota Prius,

and also produces the Insight and CR-Z. In 2008, Honda increased global production

to meet demand for small cars and hybrids in the U.S. and emerging markets. The company

shuffled U.S. production to keep factories busy and boost car output, while building

fewer minivans and sport utility vehicles as light truck sales fell.

Its first entrance into the pickup segment, the light duty Ridgeline, won Truck of the

Year from Motor Trend magazine in 2006. Also in 2006, the redesigned Civic won Car of the

Year from the magazine, giving Honda a rare double win of Motor Trend honors.

It is reported that Honda plans to increase hybrid sales in Japan to more than 20% of

its total sales in fiscal year 2011, from 14.8% in previous year.

Five of United States Environmental Protection Agency's top ten most fuel-efficient cars

from 1984 to 2010 comes from Honda, more than any other automakers. The five models are:

2000–2006 Honda Insight, 1986–1987 Honda Civic Coupe HF, 1994–1995 Honda Civic hatchback

VX, 2006– Honda Civic Hybrid, and 2010– Honda Insight. The ACEEE has also rated the

Civic GX as the greenest car in America for seven consecutive years.

Motorcycles

Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan and has been since it started production

in 1955. At its peak in 1982, Honda manufactured almost three million motorcycles annually.

By 2006 this figure had reduced to around 550,000 but was still higher than its three

domestic competitors. During the 1960s, when it was a small manufacturer,

Honda broke out of the Japanese motorcycle market and began exporting to the U.S. Working

with the advertising agency Grey Advertising, Honda created an innovative marketing campaign,

using the slogan "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." In contrast to the prevailing

negative stereotypes of motorcyclists in America as tough, antisocial rebels, this campaign

suggested that Honda motorcycles were made for the everyman. The campaign was hugely

successful; the ads ran for three years, and by the end of 1963 alone, Honda had sold 90,000

motorcycles. Taking Honda's story as an archetype of the

smaller manufacturer entering a new market already occupied by highly dominant competitors,

the story of their market entry, and their subsequent huge success in the U.S. and around

the world, has been the subject of some academic controversy. Competing explanations have been

advanced to explain Honda's strategy and the reasons for their success.

The first of these explanations was put forward when, in 1975, Boston Consulting Group was

commissioned by the UK government to write a report explaining why and how the British

motorcycle industry had been out-competed by its Japanese competitors. The report concluded

that the Japanese firms, including Honda, had sought a very high scale of production

in order to benefit from economies of scale and learning curve effects. It blamed the

decline of the British motorcycle industry on the failure of British managers to invest

enough in their businesses to profit from economies of scale and scope.

The second explanation was offered in 1984 by Richard Pascale, who had interviewed the

Honda executives responsible for the firm's entry into the U.S. market. As opposed to

the tightly focused strategy of low cost and high scale that BCG accredited to Honda, Pascale

found that their entry into the U.S. market was a story of "miscalculation, serendipity,

and organizational learning" – in other words, Honda's success was due to the adaptability

and hard work of its staff, rather than any long term strategy. For example, Honda's initial

plan on entering the US was to compete in large motorcycles, around 300 cc. Honda's

motorcycles in this class suffered performance and reliability problems when ridden the relatively

long distances of the US highways. When the team found that the scooters they were using