History of Honda

Just ran across this rather indepth (for a blog post) history of Honda Motors. It is interesting to note that Honda had similar beginnings to Vespa, turning surplus wartime motors into a solution to peacetime transportation shortages. The Honda A-type, described below, was more a moped than a motorcycle or scooter. But boy-oh-boy was it pretty, in a Dieselpunk sort of way.

Honda's first motorcycle was born out of necessity in immediate post World War II Japan, where public transportation was desperately overcrowded and gasoline severely restricted.

Looking for a solution to his, and thousands of others', personal transport problems, Honda came across a job lot of 500 war surplus two-stroke motors designed to power electric generators; nobody else wanted them so Honda picked them up cheap.

His aim was to adapt them for attachment to push-bikes and, by October 1946, his small factory in Hamamatsu was making complete, makeshift motor bikes using proprietary cycle frames. Because gasoline was in short supply, Honda adapted his motors to run on turpentine, a fuel that he himself distilled from pine trees and sold throughout Japan. Turpentine (or gas thinned out with turpentine) was not the best thing for powering motorbikes, and required a lot of strenuous pedaling to warm the engine up enough before you could get going.

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In November 1947, the 1/2 horsepower A-Type Honda was being manufactured and sold as a complete motorbike. Because the motorbike gave off a lot of smoke and a stench of turpentine it was known as the "Chimney".