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The engineer who didn't make the cut at Toyota On November 1, 1982, the first Accord came off the line in Marysville, Ohio, the first car a Japanese company ever built in America. I've driven Hondas for years. The man behind that plant was a mechanic who never finished school, nearly died racing, got turned down by Toyota, and was eventually pushed out of his own company by his best friend. Soichiro Honda left home at 15 to sweep floors at a Tokyo garage. He raced cars on the side and in 1936 crashed at the All Japan Speed Rally, flipped the car, and spent months in the hospital. He got out and started a piston ring company. His rings failed Toyota's inspection, 47 out of 50 rejected. He went back to school for metallurgy at 29, sat in the back of the class, and refused to take exams because he only wanted the knowledge. The second batch passed. The war flattened his factory. An earthquake finished off what was left in 1945. He sold the scrap to Toyota and took a year off, drinking with friends and building a salt machine. His wife was pedaling miles into the country to buy rice on the black market, so he bolted a surplus army generator engine to her bicycle. Neighbors wanted one. He bought 500 of the engines, then built his own when they ran out. That was the company, 1946, a wooden shack in Hamamatsu. Takeo Fujisawa walked in three years later and the two made a deal. Honda would never look at the books, Fujisawa would never touch the engineering, and they would retire together. Honda spent his days on the shop floor in coveralls, sometimes throwing wrenches at people who got it wrong. Fujisawa raised the money, built the dealer network, and set the targets. In 1954 Honda announced the company would win the Isle of Man TT, the toughest motorcycle race on earth. The company was near bankruptcy. They won it in 1961. The Japanese government tried to keep Honda out of cars. In 1961 the trade ministry drafted a law to lock the industry down to a few existing makers. Honda rushed the T360 truck out in 1963 to get in before the door closed, then went to Formula 1 the next year and won a race in 1965. The CVCC engine in 1972 beat US emissions rules three years early while Detroit was asking for more time. The ending is the best part. By the early 70s Honda was clinging to air cooled engines against his own young engineers, who knew water cooling was the future. Fujisawa sided with the engineers and told his partner to pick, president or engineer. Honda picked engineer. Both men retired in 1973, at the top, and let the next generation run it. The Accord came three years later and Marysville nine years after that. That same company spent heavily on EVs, took the losses, and this spring moved the money to 15 new hybrids by 2030, with spare Ohio capacity going to hybrid production. Fujisawa would have signed off. Read the market, back the engineers, and don't fall in love with your own answer. #Honda #Leadership #Manufacturing #Automotive #Founders