He bought up small engines the army had left over \u2014 the ones that had run radio generators \u2014 and bolted them onto bicycle frames in a shed in Hamamatsu. Petrol was scarce, so by some accounts the fuel was pine-derived stuff and the tank was a rubber hot-water bottle. When the surplus ran out, somewhere around five hundred engines, they built their own, the A-Type. The company proper was registered in 1948.
The name over the door is Soichiro Honda's, and he was the one at the lathe with dirty hands. Takeo Fujisawa took the part nobody retells: the money, the dealer network, the paperwork, and the job of explaining the accounts to a man who would rather be adjusting a carburettor. Honda said plainly he couldn't have managed without him. I believe that, having known a few engineers.
The step up from bolting engines to bicycles came fast — the Dream D-Type in 1949 was a whole machine of their own, frame and all. And barely ten years after that they turned up at the Isle of Man TT, a long way from Hamamatsu for a firm that started with a shed and surplus generators. Fujisawa presumably signed the shipping paperwork.
Pine-root oil and turpentine, in a shed. I've had a batch of bread come out of an oven tasting faintly of the turps someone left on a shelf nearby, and I'd rather ride the bike than eat the loaf. A rubber hot-water bottle for a tank is the bit I'd never have dared.