The history of great companies and the great men who founded them is full of moments that could change everything. Moments when the fate of a project was only determined by luck, determination or chance.
Not even the 75 years of the most important Japanese motorcycle company in the world - which will be commemorated in 2023 - are immune to these anecdotes. In fact, Honda came very close to never being the builder of cars, motorcycles and airplanes we know today and being -simply- a small whiskey distillery.
It happened that in 1937 Soichiro Honda decided to found “Tokai Seiki” in Hamamatsu to manufacture piston rings. Soichiro lived in the workshop, worked tirelessly and dedicated all his free time to building racing cars, his true dream.
At that time Japan was immersed in a war against China and, from 1941, in World War II. Some conflicts for which Honda had escaped being enlisted because he was colorblind.
The Tokai's main customer was Toyota, but when that brand began to return parts due to poor quality - Honda himself says that from a consignment of 50 they only bought 3 - the young Soichiro understood that he had to get creative. Through sleepless nights developing ideas and designing prototypes, he improved the functionality and quality of the pistons and placed Tokai in a position of reference.
And then the American bombs began to fall on Hamamatsu. Tokai Seiki - although it was a small company - was on the list of objectives of military interest of the USAF due to its status as a supplier for the aforementioned Toyota, with whose KCI-type trucks the Imperial Japanese Army traveled. And to make matters worse, one of the frequent earthquakes that periodically devastated the Japanese islands ended up destroying in 1944 what the B-29 bombs had not destroyed.
For the first time in his life, the indefatigable, rebellious Soichiro Honda was about to give up. The man who despised theorists - "If theory promoted creativity, all teachers would be inventors" - and claimed that "success is the 1% that results from 99% of failures" was thinking about throwing in the towel.
The dream of racing and engines was over. He sold the factory - or rather what was left of it -, bought a huge still that he installed in the yard of his house and decided that he would dedicate his time to distilling and marketing whiskey.
At this point we must understand that Soichiro Honda was always far from being a boring and distant Japanese technician. He was fun and a party animal, a supporter of the philosophy of “work hard and have even more fun” and in his youth he was a Don Juan who did not hold back at all with girls. Even though he was already a global businessman, he used to wear flashy shirts because he said that inventors and artists had the obligation to break with tradition.
And whiskey was an inseparable companion in that jovial personality from his youth until his death on August 5, 1991 at the age of 85.
For a year, the manufacture and sale of his whiskey was the only occupation of what would become one of the most important engineers in history.
In 1946, faced with the dramatic mobility needs of a devastated and impoverished Japan, Honda decided to temporarily park its distillery to find a way to provide its compatriots with a cheap and simple means of transportation.
The sleepless nights returned until we managed to adapt the generator of a small portable military radio to a bicycle. The invention became popular under the name "chu-chu" due to the characteristic exhaust sound it emitted and managed to sell 1,500 units. In 1947 the "chu-chu" was redesigned and gave rise to the famous A-Type. The Honda Motor Company was born.
But that is another story. A story that could have been different because of the passion for whiskey of the great Soichiro Honda.
