Honda
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, power equipment and aircraft, headquartered in Tokyo. Founded in 1948 by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa, it has been the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world since 1959 and is the largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines of any kind, producing more than fourteen million a year for its own vehicles and for sale to others.
| Honda Motor Co., Ltd. | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Traded as | TYO: 7267; NYSE: HMC; Nikkei 225 component |
| Industry | Automotive, motorcycles, power equipment, aviation, robotics |
| Founded | 24 September 1948, Hamamatsu, Japan |
| Founder | Soichiro Honda, Takeo Fujisawa |
| Headquarters | Minato, Tokyo, Japan |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Toshihiro Mibe (president and chief executive), Noriya Kaihara (executive vice president) |
| Products | Automobiles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, marine engines, generators, lawn equipment, robots, business jets |
| Revenue | Approximately ¥21 trillion (fiscal 2025) |
| Employees | Approximately 195,000 |
| Website | honda.com |
Honda's distinguishing characteristic has been engineering independence. It is the only major Japanese carmaker that grew without a keiretsu, without a bank affiliation and without acquiring or being acquired, it entered the automobile market against the explicit opposition of the Japanese government, and it has consistently pursued technical solutions its competitors regarded as impractical, from the CVCC engine of 1972 to a walking humanoid robot and a business jet.
It was the first Japanese manufacturer to build cars in the United States, opening at Marysville, Ohio, in 1982, and the first to establish a luxury marque for the American market with Acura in 1986. It has competed in Formula One intermittently since 1964 and has won the constructors' or drivers' championship as an engine supplier in several eras.
History
Soichiro Honda and the founding, 1906 to 1948
Soichiro Honda was born in 1906 in a village near Hamamatsu, the son of a blacksmith who repaired bicycles. He left school at fifteen for an apprenticeship at a Tokyo garage, Art Shokai, where he spent six years and which he left to open a branch in Hamamatsu, building and racing cars in his spare time; he was seriously injured in a crash at the Japan Speed Rally in 1936.
In 1937 he founded Tokai Seiki to manufacture piston rings, initially producing parts so poor that Toyota rejected almost all of them, which led him to study metallurgy at Hamamatsu Technical High School, attending lectures without enrolling for a degree, an episode he described afterwards as the point at which he learned that practical skill required theory. The company eventually supplied Toyota, was damaged by American bombing and by the 1945 Mikawa earthquake, and Honda sold the remains to Toyota in 1945 for ¥450,000.
He founded the Honda Technical Research Institute in Hamamatsu in October 1946 with about a dozen employees, and began fitting small war-surplus engines intended to power radios to bicycles, producing a motorised bicycle that met the immediate need of a country in which fuel was rationed and public transport had been destroyed. When the supply of surplus engines was exhausted he designed his own.
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. was incorporated on 24 September 1948. The decisive event of the following year was the arrival of Takeo Fujisawa, introduced to Honda by a mutual acquaintance, who took responsibility for finance, sales and organisation and left engineering entirely to Honda. The partnership, which lasted until both retired together in 1973, is regarded in Japanese business history as among the most effective of its kind, and Fujisawa's contribution has been consistently understated in popular accounts.
Motorcycles and the Super Cub, 1949 to 1963
The Dream D-Type of 1949 was Honda's first complete motorcycle. The company nearly failed in 1953 when it borrowed heavily to buy machine tools abroad, and survived on the success of the Cub F-Type, a clip-on engine distributed through bicycle shops by a direct mail campaign Fujisawa sent to 55,000 of them.
The Honda Super Cub, introduced in August 1958, is the most produced motor vehicle of any kind in history, with more than 100 million built and production continuing. Its design followed a brief Fujisawa gave Honda after a visit to Europe: a machine that could be ridden by anyone, including a person carrying a tray of noodles in one hand, with a step-through frame so that it could be ridden in ordinary clothes, an automatic clutch, small wheels, enclosed mechanicals and an engine quiet and clean enough not to offend. It transformed personal mobility across Asia and much of Africa and Latin America, and its American advertising campaign of 1962, under the slogan "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", changed the perception of motorcycling in that country from an activity associated with delinquency into an ordinary recreation, and is among the most studied advertising campaigns ever conducted.
Racing was pursued from the outset as an engineering discipline. Honda entered the Isle of Man TT in 1959, finishing sixth in the 125cc class, and won its first world championships in 1961 in both the 125cc and 250cc classes, having built engines of extraordinary specific output, including a 250cc six-cylinder revving beyond 18,000 revolutions per minute. Honda has since won more Grand Prix motorcycle races and championships than any other manufacturer.
Entry into cars and the CVCC, 1963 to 1980
Honda began producing automobiles in 1963 with the T360 light truck and the S500 sports car. The timing was deliberate: the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry was preparing legislation intended to consolidate the industry into a small number of producers and to prevent new entrants, and Honda entered before it could take effect. The ministry's opposition, and Soichiro Honda's public disregard for it, became part of the company's identity.
The N360 of 1967 was a kei car that briefly led the Japanese market. The decisive product was the Honda Civic, introduced in 1972, a small, light, front-wheel-drive car with a transverse engine, a layout derived from the Mini and executed with greater refinement.
Its engine made the company's reputation in the United States. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 required a 90 per cent reduction in emissions by 1975, and the American industry argued that the standard was unachievable. Honda's Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion engine, introduced on the Civic in 1972, used a small auxiliary chamber with a rich mixture to ignite a very lean main charge, producing low emissions of all three regulated pollutants without a catalytic converter and without requiring unleaded fuel. It was the first engine certified under the new standard, and Honda licensed the technology to Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Isuzu. The demonstration that a small Japanese company had solved a problem Detroit had called impossible had consequences for the reputation of both industries that outlasted the technology, which was superseded by catalytic converters within a decade.
The Honda Accord, introduced in 1976, extended the approach to a larger car and became the best-selling car in the United States in 1989, the first imported model to achieve it.
Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa both retired in 1973, at 66 and 62, handing the company to Kiyoshi Kawashima and establishing a principle of orderly succession at a fixed stage that the company has largely maintained. Honda refused to allow his children to join the company, on the ground that management should be earned, and the founding family has had no role in it since.
American manufacturing and Acura, 1979 to 1999
Honda began building motorcycles at Marysville, Ohio, in 1979 and automobiles on the adjacent site from November 1982, the first Japanese manufacturer to produce cars in the United States. The decision preceded the voluntary export restraints agreed in 1981 and was therefore not merely a response to them, and it established a pattern every other Japanese manufacturer followed.
The Ohio operations grew into one of the largest manufacturing complexes in North America, with engine production at Anna, transmissions at Russells Point and further assembly in Indiana, Alabama and Canada. Honda has been a net exporter of vehicles from the United States in several years, shipping American-built models to Japan and elsewhere, and the localisation of its supply chain has been among the most complete of any foreign manufacturer.
Acura was launched in the United States and Canada in March 1986 as the first Japanese luxury marque, four years before Lexus and Infiniti. The Legend and Integra were well received, and the NSX of 1990, developed with input from Ayrton Senna and using an aluminium monocoque and variable valve timing, demonstrated that a mid-engined supercar could be reliable and usable, a proposition Ferrari and others were obliged to respond to.
Honda's second period in Formula One was the most successful in the sport's history for an engine supplier. Its turbocharged V6 powered Williams to constructors' championships in 1986 and 1987 and McLaren from 1988, and the McLaren MP4/4 of 1988, driven by Senna and Alain Prost, won fifteen of sixteen races. Honda engines took six consecutive constructors' titles from 1986 to 1991 before the company withdrew.
The 1990s were more difficult. The Japanese asset price collapse, the strength of the yen and the death of Soichiro Honda in 1991 coincided with a product range criticised as conservative, and the company was the subject of persistent takeover speculation, including suggestions that Mitsubishi might acquire it. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, president from 1990, responded by reducing costs and by moving development toward sport utility vehicles and minivans for the American market, producing the Odyssey and the CR-V, the latter becoming one of the best-selling vehicles in the world.
An American corruption scandal in the same period, in which executives of American Honda were convicted of taking payments from dealers in exchange for vehicle allocations during a period when supply was constrained, damaged the company's reputation and resulted in prison sentences.
Robots, aircraft and hybrids, 1999 to 2020
Honda has pursued lines of research whose commercial purpose was not obvious, a practice its engineers describe as characteristic and its investors have periodically questioned.
ASIMO, unveiled in 2000 after fourteen years of humanoid robotics research begun in 1986, could walk, climb stairs, run and recognise faces and gestures, and was the most capable bipedal robot in the world for more than a decade. It was retired from development in 2018 without ever being a product, and the technology contributed to walking assistance devices and to the company's robotics work.
HondaJet, a very light business jet developed from 1986 under Michimasa Fujino, entered service in 2015. Its distinguishing feature is the mounting of the engines on pylons above the wings rather than on the fuselage, an arrangement conventional aerodynamics suggested would be inefficient and which Fujino demonstrated reduced drag at cruise while freeing cabin volume. It has been the most delivered aircraft in its class for several consecutive years, and Honda Aircraft Company operates from Greensboro, North Carolina.
The Insight of 1999 was the first hybrid sold in the United States, preceding the Toyota Prius there by several months, and Honda's Integrated Motor Assist system was simpler and lighter than Toyota's arrangement though less capable at low speeds. The company subsequently fell behind in hybrids and has since adopted a two-motor system used across its range.
Honda also pursued hydrogen fuel cells persistently, producing the FCX Clarity in 2008, the first fuel cell vehicle offered to retail customers, and continuing to develop the technology with General Motors for commercial vehicles and stationary power after battery vehicles became the industry's principal direction.
The company's third Formula One period, supplying McLaren from 2015, was unsuccessful and publicly acrimonious, with Fernando Alonso's radio criticism of the engine becoming widely circulated. Honda moved to Toro Rosso in 2018 and to Red Bull Racing in 2019, winning the drivers' championship with Max Verstappen in 2021, and announced a withdrawal that took effect formally while the company continued to supply engines under a support arrangement. It will return as a works supplier to Aston Martin in 2026.
Recent history, 2020 to 2026
Toshihiro Mibe, an engine engineer, became president in April 2021 and announced that Honda would sell only battery electric and fuel cell vehicles by 2040, among the most definite commitments made by any large manufacturer.
The execution has been complicated. Honda entered a partnership with General Motors in 2020 covering platforms, batteries and autonomous vehicles, which produced the Acura ZDX and Honda Prologue built on General Motors' Ultium platform, and which was substantially curtailed in 2023 when the two companies abandoned a plan to develop affordable electric vehicles together. It has invested in its own 0 Series architecture, previewed in 2024 and entering production from 2026, and in a battery joint venture with LG Energy Solution in Ohio, while converting its existing Ohio plants into what it calls an electric vehicle hub.
Honda and Sony formed Sony Honda Mobility in 2022 to produce the Afeela, a vehicle intended to compete on software and entertainment rather than on driving, with deliveries from 2026.
In December 2024 Honda and Nissan announced talks toward a merger that would have created the third-largest automotive group in the world, with Mitsubishi Motors expected to participate. The negotiations collapsed in February 2025 after Honda proposed that Nissan become a subsidiary rather than an equal partner, which Nissan's board rejected. The episode exposed the weakness of the Japanese industry relative to Chinese competitors and the difficulty of combining companies whose difficulties differ in kind.
Honda has also been affected by the Takata airbag recall, the largest in automotive history, which involved inflators that could rupture and propel metal fragments into the cabin. Honda was Takata's largest customer and the manufacturer most affected, recalling tens of millions of vehicles worldwide, and it was criticised for the slow reporting of claims to regulators, for which it paid a US$70 million penalty in 2015. Deaths attributed to the defect in Honda vehicles number in the dozens, and recall repairs continue.
Model history
Motorcycles
The Dream D-Type of 1949 was the first complete Honda motorcycle. The Cub F-Type of 1952, a clip-on engine for bicycles, financed the company's expansion. The Super Cub C100 of 1958 became the most produced motor vehicle in history.
The CB750 of 1969 is generally regarded as the first modern superbike: a transverse four-cylinder engine with an overhead camshaft, a front disc brake, an electric starter and reliability, offered at a price below the British twins it destroyed. Its effect on the British motorcycle industry, which collapsed within a decade, was direct and is among the clearest instances of a single product ending an industry.
The Gold Wing of 1975 created the full-dress touring category. The CBX of 1978 used a six-cylinder engine. The VFR750R RC30 of 1987 and the NR750 of 1992, which carried the oval pistons developed for racing into a road bike, were built for homologation and for demonstration respectively. The FireBlade or CBR900RR of 1992, developed by Tadao Baba, applied the principle of reducing weight rather than adding power and redefined the sports motorcycle. The Africa Twin, first produced in 1988 and revived in 2016, serves the adventure category, and the Monkey, Grom and Dax occupy a market of small recreational machines Honda largely created.
Automobiles
The T360 and S500 of 1963 were Honda's first cars. The N360 of 1967 led the Japanese kei market. The Civic of 1972 established the company internationally, and the Accord of 1976 moved it into the mainstream. The Prelude of 1978 and the CRX of 1983 served the sporting market. The Legend of 1985 was the first premium Honda, sold as an Acura in North America, and was developed alongside the Rover 800 under a partnership with British Leyland that ran from 1979 to 1994 and which produced several shared models including the Rover 200 and the Honda Concerto built at Longbridge.
The NSX of 1990 was the first Japanese mid-engined supercar and the first production car with an all-aluminium monocoque. The Odyssey of 1994, the CR-V of 1995 and the Element of 2003 addressed the American utility market. The Insight of 1999 was the first hybrid sold in the United States. The Fit or Jazz of 2001 used a centre fuel tank to produce interior space disproportionate to its exterior, an arrangement the company calls Man Maximum, Machine Minimum, which has been the organising principle of its packaging since the 1970s. The Civic Type R in successive generations has held the front-wheel-drive lap record at the Nürburgring on several occasions.
The e of 2020 was an electric city car praised for its design and withdrawn after three years for lack of sales, and the Prologue of 2024 and 0 Series from 2026 are the current electric models.
Honda in Britain and Europe
Honda's British relationship began with the Rover collaboration in 1979, under which the two companies shared platforms and each built the other's cars, an arrangement that gave the struggling British manufacturer competent engineering and gave Honda a European manufacturing foothold. It ended when BMW acquired Rover in 1994, a transaction Honda learned of only shortly before its announcement and treated as a betrayal.
The company built its own plant at Swindon, producing cars from 1992 and reaching approximately a quarter of a million a year at its peak with the Civic, CR-V and Accord. It closed in July 2021 with the loss of some 3,000 jobs, and Honda withdrew from manufacturing in Europe entirely, also closing its Turkish plant in the same year. European sales have since been supplied from Japan, and the company's share of the European market has fallen to around one per cent.
The withdrawal reflected the general difficulty of Japanese manufacturers in Europe, where diesel had dominated the segments Honda served, where its models were not competitive on price against European volume manufacturers, and where the scale required to amortise a plant could not be achieved.
Honda in Asia
Honda's largest business by units is in Asia, and the great majority of it is motorcycles. Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India and Hero Honda, the joint venture with the Hero Group that ran from 1984 to 2011 and was for a time the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world by volume, established the company's position in India, and Honda remains the second-largest producer there after Hero, which continued independently.
In Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand Honda holds very large shares of the motorcycle market, exceeding three quarters in Indonesia, and the word Honda is used generically for a motorcycle in several countries. Its Chinese operations comprise joint ventures with Dongfeng and Guangqi, whose sales have fallen sharply since 2022 as domestic electric manufacturers have taken the market, and the company has reduced capacity there.
Japan remains an important but not dominant market for the company, where the N-Box kei car has been the best-selling vehicle in the country for most of the past decade.
Corporate culture and philanthropy
The Honda Foundation, established in 1977 by Soichiro Honda and his brother Benjiro, awards the annual Honda Prize for contributions to ecotechnology, a term the founder coined to describe technology considered in the context of its human and environmental effects; it was the first Japanese international prize in science and technology.
Soichiro Honda, who was given an honorary doctorate by Michigan Technological University in 1974 despite having never completed a degree, was elected to the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1989, the first Japanese person to be so honoured. He and his wife Sachi both held motorcycle licences into old age, and he insisted on a family funeral without a corporate ceremony on the ground that company events caused traffic congestion.
The company's internal practices, including the Honda Philosophy of respect for the individual and the three joys of buying, selling and creating, are set out formally and are quoted more frequently in management literature than most such statements, in part because Honda's founder articulated them in unusually direct language.
Finances
Honda reported revenue of approximately ¥21 trillion in the financial year to March 2025. Its automobile business produces the majority of revenue and a minority of operating profit, its motorcycle business produces a minority of revenue and a very large share of profit, with operating margins in the region of fifteen per cent, and its financial services arm contributes materially. Power products and aviation are small in both.
The disparity between the two principal businesses is the central fact of the company's finances and is not well understood outside it: Honda is frequently analysed as a carmaker that also sells motorcycles, when in profit terms the reverse is closer to the truth.
The company has historically held a conservative balance sheet with substantial net cash in its industrial operations, which has allowed it to sustain research spending through downturns and to refuse partnerships it did not want, and it has increased shareholder returns substantially since 2023 under pressure from investors and from the Tokyo Stock Exchange's campaign to raise valuations among Japanese companies trading below book value.
Products
Motorcycles
Honda has been the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world since 1959, producing around twenty million units a year, the great majority small-capacity commuter machines sold in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Brazil are its largest markets, and in several of them Honda holds more than half the market.
The Honda Super Cub and its derivatives, the Wave, Dream and similar models, constitute the volume business and are for very large numbers of people the first motor vehicle they own. The company also produces the Gold Wing touring motorcycle, in production since 1975; the CB and CBR road and sports ranges; the Africa Twin and other adventure motorcycles; the CRF off-road and motocross machines; scooters including the PCX and Forza; and all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles.
Its competition record is unmatched: more than 800 Grand Prix motorcycle victories and a very large number of riders' and constructors' championships, along with dominance of the Isle of Man TT, the Dakar Rally in certain periods and motocross.
Automobiles
The Honda Civic, in production since 1972 and in its eleventh generation, is among the best-selling nameplates in history. The Honda Accord has been produced since 1976 and has been the best-selling car in the United States in several years. The CR-V, introduced in 1995, is among the best-selling vehicles in the world, and the HR-V, Pilot and Passport complete the utility range. The Odyssey minivan and the Ridgeline, an unusual unibody pickup, serve North America specifically. The Fit or Jazz is the supermini, the N-Box the best-selling kei car in Japan, and the Prologue and 0 Series the electric models.
Acura comprises the Integra, TLX, RDX, MDX and ZDX, and the NSX in two generations, the second of which, produced between 2016 and 2022, was a hybrid supercar built in Ohio.
Type R denotes the performance versions of the Civic and formerly the Integra and NSX, and Honda's naturally aspirated VTEC engines of the 1990s, which used variable valve timing and lift to combine tractability with very high specific output, have a following among enthusiasts disproportionate to their commercial significance.
Power products and other businesses
Honda is the largest producer of general purpose engines in the world, supplying generators, pumps, lawnmowers, tillers, snow blowers, outboard motors and the engines fitted to equipment sold by other manufacturers. The GX series of small four-stroke engines is the standard power unit for commercial equipment across much of the world, and the business is steadily profitable and largely invisible.
It also produces marine outboards, has built aero engines including the HF120 developed with General Electric, and maintains research in robotics, avatar robots, energy storage and space technology, including a reusable rocket demonstrated in a hop test in 2025.
Research and engineering culture
Honda R&D Co., Ltd. was established as a separate company in 1960, a structure Soichiro Honda insisted upon so that research would not be subordinated to the immediate requirements of production and sales. Engineers were promoted within a technical track rather than into management, projects were assigned to teams that competed internally, and the company operated a practice known as waigaya, unstructured discussion in which rank was suspended and any participant could challenge any proposal.
The approach produced both the company's distinctive engineering and its distinctive failures. It has repeatedly built things no one asked for, including a humanoid robot and a business jet, and has repeatedly been late to things its customers wanted, including minivans in the 1990s, hybrids after 2005 and electric vehicles after 2020. Its refusal to use other manufacturers' platforms, maintained until the General Motors arrangement, has cost it the scale economies its competitors obtained.
Soichiro Honda's own maxims, including his insistence that success is 99 per cent failure and that the company should not imitate, remain in use internally and are quoted in management literature with a frequency that has detached them somewhat from their origin.
Power products and engines
Honda's power products division is the least visible and among the most durable parts of the company. It produces general purpose engines, generators, water pumps, tillers, brushcutters, lawnmowers, snow throwers and outboard motors, and supplies engines to other manufacturers who fit them to their own equipment.
The GX series of small four-stroke engines, introduced in 1983, became the standard power unit for commercial construction and landscaping equipment across much of the world, displacing the two-stroke engines that preceded it on grounds of noise, emissions and starting reliability. A pressure washer, a plate compactor or a generator sold by any of dozens of brands is frequently powered by a Honda engine, and the company has produced more than 150 million of them.
EU series inverter generators, which produce output clean enough for electronics and quiet enough for domestic use, are the standard against which competitors are measured, and Honda's outboard motors, all four-stroke since the company abandoned two-strokes in the 1960s on environmental grounds long before regulation required it, hold a substantial share of the recreational marine market.
The division's significance is partly financial, since it is steadily profitable and uncorrelated with the automotive cycle, and partly strategic: it keeps the company in contact with small engine technology and with a very large number of customers who will encounter Honda's brand on a product they use at work.
Recent strategic developments
The Nissan negotiations
Honda and Nissan announced a memorandum of understanding in March 2024 to cooperate on electrification and software, extended to include Mitsubishi Motors in August, and on 23 December 2024 announced negotiations toward a full business combination under a joint holding company, with completion contemplated for 2026. The combined group would have been the third largest in the world by volume.
The arrangement collapsed in February 2025. Honda proposed that Nissan become a wholly owned subsidiary rather than an equal partner in a holding company, a change it attributed to the slow progress of Nissan's own restructuring, and Nissan's board rejected it as inconsistent with the basis on which talks had begun. The two companies stated that cooperation on specific projects would continue.
The episode was read in Japan as evidence of the pressure on the domestic industry. Nissan's difficulties were acute, Honda's scale was insufficient for the investment electrification requires, and the prospect of the two combining had been discussed for years without either being willing to accept subordination. It also drew an approach to Nissan from the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, which had been building an automotive capability, an indication of how the boundaries of the industry have changed.
Space and new businesses
Honda R&D has conducted research into reusable launch vehicles since 2021, and in June 2025 conducted a successful vertical take-off and landing test of a small demonstrator in Hokkaido, reaching approximately 300 metres and landing within 40 centimetres of its target. The company has stated an objective of a suborbital launch capability toward 2029, drawing on combustion, control and guidance expertise developed for other purposes, and has also worked on a circulative renewable energy system for lunar surface operations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Other work includes the Honda Avatar Robot, a remotely operated multi-fingered hand and arm intended to allow physical tasks to be performed at a distance; electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft research; and energy storage and management services built around second-life vehicle batteries.
Design
Honda's product design has been variable in reputation and consistent in method. Its packaging principle, Man Maximum, Machine Minimum, directs that the space occupied by mechanical components be minimised in favour of the occupants, and produced the very large interiors of the Fit, the Odyssey and the N-Box relative to their external dimensions, achieved through measures including the centre-mounted fuel tank and unusually compact engine bays.
Its styling has been criticised at several points, particularly in the 2010s, when the Civic's angular treatment and heavy detailing divided opinion, and the eleventh-generation Civic of 2021 and the current range represent a deliberate return to simpler surfaces. The 0 Series concepts shown from 2024 use a low, flat architecture the company describes as thin, light and wise, explicitly rejecting the large battery and heavy structure of most electric vehicles.
The company's motorcycle design and its power equipment design have been more consistently praised, and the Super Cub's form, essentially unchanged since 1958, is among the small number of industrial designs to have been in continuous production for more than six decades.
Corporate affairs
Leadership and ownership
Honda is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and in New York. It has no controlling shareholder, no bank affiliation of the kind that characterises the Japanese keiretsu and no founding family involvement, and its presidents have been engineers promoted internally in an unbroken succession since 1973: Kiyoshi Kawashima, Tadashi Kume, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, Hiroyuki Yoshino, Takeo Fukui, Takanobu Ito, Takahiro Hachigo and Toshihiro Mibe.
Operations
The company operates manufacturing in Japan, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the United Kingdom until 2021, Turkey until 2021, India, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Nigeria and elsewhere. It closed its Swindon plant in Britain in 2021, ending 35 years of European manufacturing, on the ground that the scale of its European sales did not support a factory, a decision announced before and unconnected with Britain's departure from the European Union though widely discussed in that context.
Its financial services arm provides retail and dealer financing in its major markets and contributes materially to earnings.
Competition
Honda competes in automobiles with Toyota, considerably larger, with Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors and the Chinese manufacturers, and in motorcycles with Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Bajaj, Hero and TVS in India, and increasingly with Chinese electric two-wheeler producers.
Its position in automobiles is comfortable in North America and Japan and weak in Europe and China, where its sales have fallen sharply as domestic manufacturers have taken the market. Its position in motorcycles is dominant and is its principal source of profit in several years, a fact obscured by the greater revenue of the automobile business.
Robotics and aviation
ASIMO and humanoid robotics
Honda began humanoid robotics research in 1986 with a question posed inside the company: whether a machine could walk as a human does. The programme proceeded through the E-series of legs, which established dynamic balance, and the P-series of complete humanoids, of which P2, revealed in 1996, astonished the robotics community because no organisation had been known to be working on the problem at that scale and because the machine walked untethered.
ASIMO, an acronym for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility and a reference to Isaac Asimov, was introduced in 2000 at 120 centimetres, a height chosen so that it could operate switches and interact with a seated person without being intimidating. Successive versions walked, climbed and descended stairs, ran at nine kilometres an hour, hopped on one leg, poured liquid from a flask, recognised faces and voices, and responded to gestures. It appeared at the New York Stock Exchange, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and toured extensively.
ASIMO was never sold and was retired from active development in 2018. Its purpose, the company has said, was to develop capability rather than a product, and the technology contributed to the Walking Assist Device for people with impaired mobility, to the UNI-CUB personal mobility seat, to the Honda Avatar Robot announced in 2021, to disaster response robots developed after the Fukushima accident, and to the company's understanding of balance and actuation generally.
The programme is also a standing example of the argument about Honda's research: it produced a machine of extraordinary technical accomplishment and no revenue, at a time when the company's competitors were investing in hybrid drivetrains that customers bought.
HondaJet
Michimasa Fujino joined Honda R&D in 1984 and was assigned to aircraft research in 1986. The configuration for which the aircraft is known, with the engines mounted on pylons above and forward on the wings, came to him in 1997; conventional analysis held that a nacelle above a wing would interfere destructively with the airflow, and Fujino determined that at a particular chordwise position the interference could be made favourable, reducing wave drag at high subsonic speed.
The arrangement removes the structure that carries fuselage-mounted engines, freeing cabin and baggage volume and reducing cabin noise, and the aircraft also uses a natural laminar flow wing and nose. A proof-of-concept flew in 2003, the production aircraft was announced in 2006, certification took until December 2015, and the HondaJet has been the most delivered aircraft in the very light jet category for several consecutive years. An enlarged model, the Echelon, was announced for later in the decade.
Honda Aircraft Company operates from Greensboro, North Carolina, and Honda developed the HF120 engine with General Electric through a joint venture.
Manufacturing and suppliers
Honda's production system shares the general characteristics of Japanese manufacturing, including just-in-time supply, continuous improvement and stopping the line for defects, and differs in several respects. It has generally built flexible plants capable of producing several models on one line, which allowed it to switch production between segments more quickly than competitors during the fuel price movements of 2008 and again during the semiconductor shortage.
Its supplier relationships are close and long-term in the Japanese manner, and Honda has historically held minority stakes in key suppliers, including Keihin, Showa and Nissin, which were consolidated into Hitachi Astemo in 2021 in a transaction that gave Honda a third of a large components group and reflected the industry's need for scale in electrification components.
The company's principal manufacturing regions are Japan, where Suzuka, Yorii and Kumamoto are the main sites; North America, where the Ohio complex at Marysville, East Liberty, Anna and Russells Point is among the largest owned by any manufacturer, alongside Alabama, Indiana, Mexico and Canada; South America; and Asia, where Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and China each contain substantial operations.
Marketing
Honda's advertising has produced several campaigns of unusual note. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", run in the United States from 1962 by Grey Advertising, is among the most effective repositioning campaigns ever conducted, transforming the motorcycle from a disreputable object into an ordinary one and expanding the market rather than taking share within it.
"Cog", a two-minute British television advertisement of 2003 in which parts of an Accord set one another in motion in a Rube Goldberg sequence, was filmed in a single take after 606 attempts and is among the most awarded advertisements ever made. "Grrr", "Impossible Dream" and "Hands" continued the same approach, and the British campaigns of that period, built around the idea of engineers who dislike things as they are, were closely aligned with the company's actual character.
The Power of Dreams, used as a global tagline since 2000, derives from Soichiro Honda's own language and was revised in 2024 to How we move you.
Criticism
Beyond the Takata recall and the 1990s American dealer corruption case, Honda has faced criticism over the reliability of certain automatic transmissions in Odyssey and Acura models in the early 2000s, over oil dilution in some direct-injected engines, over the fuel economy claims made for the Civic Hybrid, which produced an unusual small claims action in California in 2012 in which an owner was initially awarded damages before the decision was overturned, and over the durability of certain paint finishes.
Its labour practices in Japan and North America have generally been well regarded and its American plants are not unionised, a position the United Automobile Workers has attempted to change without success and which the union identified in 2023 as an objective of its post-settlement organising campaign.
Environmental criticism of Honda is comparatively mild by the standards of the industry, reflecting its fuel economy record and the small size of its vehicles, and the principal objection made is the same made of every manufacturer: that the transition away from combustion has been slower than the company's own stated targets imply.
Timeline
Key dates include Soichiro Honda's founding of Tokai Seiki in 1937 and its sale to Toyota in 1945; the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946; incorporation on 24 September 1948; Takeo Fujisawa's arrival in 1949; the Dream D-Type in 1949 and the Cub F-Type in 1952; the declaration of intent to contest the Isle of Man TT in 1954; the Super Cub in August 1958; the first TT entry in 1959; the first world championships in 1961; the American advertising campaign of 1962; the entry into automobiles in 1963 and into Formula One in 1964; the first Formula One victory in 1965; the five-class championship sweep of 1966; the CVCC engine and the Civic in 1972; the retirement of Honda and Fujisawa in 1973; the Accord in 1976; the Gold Wing in 1975 and the CB750 in 1969; motorcycle production at Marysville in 1979 and automobile production in 1982; the launch of Acura in 1986; the McLaren-Honda dominance of 1988; the NSX in 1990; Soichiro Honda's death in August 1991; the Insight in 1999; ASIMO in 2000; the FCX Clarity in 2008; the withdrawal from Formula One in December 2008; HondaJet certification in 2015; the return to Formula One with McLaren in 2015 and with Red Bull from 2019; the Level 3 Legend in March 2021; Toshihiro Mibe's appointment in April 2021 and the 2040 electrification commitment; the closure of Swindon in July 2021; the Sony Honda Mobility joint venture in 2022; the collapse of the Nissan merger talks in February 2025; and the return to Formula One with Aston Martin in 2026.
In popular culture
Honda products occupy a distinctive place in several cultures. The Super Cub is so widespread in Southeast Asia that it has become part of the visual identity of the region, and in Vietnam the word Honda is used for any motorcycle regardless of maker. In Japan the Super Cub was designated an item of importance to industrial design by the government, and it was the first motor vehicle to receive that recognition.
The CB750 and the Gold Wing shaped American motorcycling, the former by ending the British industry and the latter by creating long-distance touring as a mass activity. The Civic and the Integra became the foundation of the import tuning culture that grew in California in the 1990s and spread internationally, documented in the Fast and Furious films, whose first instalment in 2001 was built around modified Japanese cars and whose opening sequence features a Civic; the cultural phenomenon that followed was created by enthusiasts modifying cars Honda had designed for economy, and the company's relationship with it has been ambivalent.
The NSX's development with Ayrton Senna, who tested the prototype at Suzuka and told the engineers the chassis was insufficiently stiff, causing a redesign, is among the better-known anecdotes in automotive engineering, and the car's influence on Ferrari's subsequent approach to usability has been acknowledged by that company's engineers.
ASIMO became a recognisable figure in Japan and appeared in advertising, at public events and in the Disney parks, and the robot's retirement in 2018 was reported as a news event in a way corporate research programmes rarely are.
Soichiro Honda himself is among the small number of industrialists who became public figures in Japan, in part because his manner was informal and combative in a business culture that was neither. His remarks, including his statement that he had failed his way to success and his description of the company's purpose as the joy of creating, are quoted in Japanese schools and in management courses internationally.
Legacy
Honda's significance extends beyond its products. It demonstrated that a company founded after the war by a man with no formal education and no capital could compete with the established industries of the United States and Europe on engineering rather than on price, which was not the assumption made about Japanese manufacturing in 1960. It did so without the bank relationships, the trading company connections and the government support that characterised its domestic competitors, and while being actively discouraged by the ministry responsible for industrial policy.
The CVCC engine in particular altered the standing of the Japanese industry permanently. The demonstration in 1972 that a company with a fraction of the resources of General Motors could meet an emissions standard that General Motors had told Congress was unachievable was understood at the time, on both sides of the Pacific, as a statement about more than engines.
Its persistent weakness has been the reverse of the same disposition. A company that insists on doing things itself, that pursues research without a product in view and that declines partnerships has borne development costs alone that its competitors shared, and has arrived late to several markets its engineers regarded as uninteresting. The transition to electric vehicles, which removes the artefact the company is best at making, is the most serious test of that disposition it has faced.
Assessment
Honda is the last of the major automotive companies founded by an engineer who designed its products, and the character persists three generations after his retirement. It has produced more internal combustion engines than any organisation in history, built the most numerous motor vehicle ever made, solved an emissions problem the American industry called impossible, and constructed a walking robot and an aeroplane because its engineers wished to.
Its present position is more difficult than at any time since the early 1990s. The transition to electric vehicles removes the engine, which is the company's distinguishing competence and the source of its brand; its scale is insufficient to absorb the development cost alone, which is why it sought partnerships with General Motors, Sony and finally Nissan; and Chinese manufacturers are competing directly in the motorcycle markets that produce a large part of its profit as well as in cars.
Its advantages are a balance sheet with little debt, a reputation for reliability that is among the strongest in the industry, dominance of a motorcycle business that is growing where populations are, and an engineering organisation that has repeatedly produced solutions no one expected. Whether the last of these is adequate to a transition in which the relevant technology is batteries and software rather than combustion is the question facing the company.
See also
North America
North America produces the majority of Honda's automobile profit. The company sells roughly 1.4 million vehicles a year in the United States, where the Civic, Accord, CR-V and Pilot are its principal products and where it consistently ranks among the highest-volume foreign manufacturers.
Its American operations are unusually localised. Honda has built vehicles in Ohio since 1982, engines at Anna since 1985 in what is among the largest engine plants in the world, transmissions at Russells Point, and vehicles in Indiana since 2008, Alabama since 2001 and Ontario since 1986. It operates research and development at Raymond, Ohio, where the Acura NSX was developed and built, and the majority of the vehicles it sells in the country are made in it, a proportion higher than several American manufacturers achieve.
The relationship has been politically useful and commercially consequential. Honda's early localisation preceded the trade friction of the 1980s and gave it standing in Washington that arrived later for its competitors, and the Ohio complex has been a central element in the economic development of a region that lost employment in other industries. It has also concentrated the company's exposure: tariffs applied to vehicles and components imported from Canada and Mexico from 2025 affect Honda's integrated North American production directly, and the company has said that they would cost it billions of dollars a year while noting that its domestic content limits the damage relative to competitors.
Acura's position within that business has been persistently difficult. Launched before its Japanese rivals and initially successful, it has since been outsold by Lexus and by the German marques, and successive attempts to reposition it, including the Precision concept direction of 2016 and the return to performance emphasis with the Integra and Type S models, have improved its standing without restoring the share it held in 1990.
Global motorcycle markets
Honda's motorcycle business is larger in units than any automotive business in the world and is structured entirely differently from its car operations.
In India, the largest motorcycle market, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India holds roughly a quarter of the market and leads in scooters with the Activa, the best-selling two-wheeler in the country. The Hero Honda joint venture, which ran from 1984 until its dissolution in 2011, was for many years the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world by volume, and Hero's continued independent success with products derived from that partnership is among the more significant instances of technology transfer producing a competitor.
In Indonesia, Honda holds more than three quarters of a market of several million units a year through Astra Honda Motor. In Vietnam its share is comparable and the brand name is used generically for a motorcycle. In Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil it leads or is among the leaders. In each of these markets the motorcycle is the principal means by which households acquire motorised transport, and the machines concerned are inexpensive, economical and repairable, characteristics that have been constant since the Super Cub.
The business faces two pressures. Chinese manufacturers compete at lower prices across Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and electric two-wheelers, which are simpler and cheaper to run and which Chinese and Indian companies have brought to market quickly, threaten the small-capacity segment that constitutes Honda's volume. The company's response has been a range of electric models, a swappable battery consortium with the other Japanese manufacturers, and an announced intention to offer thirty electric motorcycle models by 2030.
Motorsport
Honda's involvement in racing is unusually central to its identity. Soichiro Honda announced in 1954, when the company was small and struggling, that it would enter the Isle of Man TT and win, and the declaration is still quoted internally as an example of stating an objective before the means to achieve it exist.
Motorcycle racing
Honda first entered the Isle of Man TT in 1959 and won the manufacturers' team prize. In 1961 it won both the 125cc and 250cc world championships, and in 1966 it won all five solo classes, from 50cc to 500cc, in the same season, an achievement no manufacturer has repeated. Its engines of the period were extraordinary: a 50cc twin revving to 21,500 revolutions per minute, a 125cc five-cylinder, a 250cc six-cylinder, all built to compensate for the power disadvantage of four-stroke engines against the two-strokes then dominant.
The company withdrew in 1967 and returned in 1979 with the NR500, an oval-piston four-stroke intended to defeat two-strokes within the same displacement rules, which failed comprehensively and which Honda has since described as the most instructive failure in its history. It capitulated and built the two-stroke NS500, on which Freddie Spencer won the 500cc championship in 1983.
Honda has since won more Grand Prix races than any other manufacturer, with riders including Mick Doohan, who took five consecutive 500cc titles from 1994, Valentino Rossi, Nicky Hayden, Casey Stoner and Marc Márquez, who won six MotoGP titles with the company between 2013 and 2019. Its dominance ended abruptly after Márquez's injury in 2020, and the RC213V became uncompetitive, producing the worst sustained period in the company's racing history and a public reorganisation of the racing department.
It has also won the Dakar Rally, the Motocross World Championship, the Trials championships and the Suzuka 8 Hours a very large number of times.
Formula One
Honda has competed in Formula One in five distinct periods.
1964 to 1968 as a constructor, building the whole car. Richie Ginther won the Mexican Grand Prix in 1965 with the RA272, the first Japanese car to win a Formula One race, and John Surtees won at Monza in 1967. The company withdrew after Jo Schlesser was killed in a magnesium-bodied Honda at Rouen in 1968.
1983 to 1992 as an engine supplier, the most successful period any engine manufacturer has had. Honda turbo engines powered Williams to titles in 1986 and 1987 and McLaren from 1988 to 1991, and the partnership with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost produced the McLaren MP4/4, which won fifteen of sixteen races in 1988. Honda took six consecutive constructors' championships and withdrew at the end of 1992.
2000 to 2008, supplying and then owning a team, which produced a single victory, Jenson Button at Hungary in 2006, and the earth car of 2007, whose livery displayed an image of the planet instead of sponsors. Honda withdrew abruptly in December 2008 during the financial crisis; the team was bought by Ross Brawn for a nominal sum, won both championships in 2009 with the engine Honda had abandoned replaced by a Mercedes unit, and became the Mercedes works team.
2015 to 2021, returning with McLaren in a partnership that failed publicly, then with Toro Rosso from 2018 and Red Bull Racing from 2019, with which it won the drivers' championship with Max Verstappen in 2021. The company announced its withdrawal in 2020 to concentrate on carbon neutrality, then continued to supply engines under a support arrangement through 2025.
From 2026 as a works supplier to Aston Martin under the new regulations, which require a much larger proportion of the power unit's output to come from electrical energy, a change Honda cited as the reason for returning.
Other disciplines
Honda has supplied engines to IndyCar since 1994 and has won numerous championships and Indianapolis 500 victories, competing against Chevrolet. It has competed in the World Touring Car Championship, the British Touring Car Championship, and in the Pikes Peak hill climb, and its engines have powered a substantial proportion of Formula racing below the top level.
Environment and technology
Emissions and efficiency
The CVCC engine of 1972 established Honda's reputation on emissions, and the company has consistently ranked among the best manufacturers on fleet average fuel economy in the United States, in several years the highest of any full-line manufacturer.
Its VTEC system, introduced in 1989, varies both the timing and the lift of the valves by switching between camshaft profiles, allowing an engine to combine a usable idle and low-speed torque with very high output at high speed. It became the company's best-known technology and the basis of a substantial enthusiast culture.
Earth Dreams, introduced in 2011, denotes the family of engines, transmissions and hybrid systems developed to improve efficiency, including direct injection, continuously variable transmissions and the two-motor hybrid arrangement now used across the range.
Electrification and hydrogen
Honda's stated objective is that all its global automobile sales will be battery electric or fuel cell vehicles by 2040 and that the company will be carbon neutral across its operations and products by 2050.
Its electric programme has three strands: vehicles built on General Motors' platform as an interim measure, the Prologue and Acura ZDX; the 0 Series built on Honda's own architecture from 2026, which the company has designed around thin packaging and low weight rather than very large batteries; and electric motorcycles and small mobility products, where Honda's position is considerably stronger and where it leads a consortium developing swappable batteries with Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki.
Hydrogen has been pursued continuously since the 1980s. The FCX Clarity of 2008 was the first fuel cell vehicle leased to retail customers, and the company continues to develop fuel cell systems with General Motors for commercial vehicles, construction machinery, stationary generation and, potentially, space applications, on the judgement that hydrogen suits heavy and continuously operated applications that batteries serve poorly.
Safety
Honda has been an early adopter of safety technology, including the first airbag fitted to a Japanese car in 1987, collision mitigation braking in 2003, the Advanced Compatibility Engineering body structure designed to protect the occupants of the other vehicle in a collision as well as its own, and the standardisation of the Honda Sensing suite of driver assistance systems across the range.
In March 2021 Honda became the first manufacturer in the world to sell a vehicle certified for Level 3 conditional automated driving, the Legend Hybrid EX with Traffic Jam Pilot, which permitted the driver to look away from the road in congested traffic on designated expressways. Only a hundred were leased in Japan, and the limited deployment reflected both regulatory caution and the difficulty of establishing liability when the system is engaged.
The Takata airbag recall, described above, is the most serious safety matter in the company's history and involved a supplier defect in a component Honda specified and installed in more vehicles than any other manufacturer.