| Honda Motorcycles
Company founder Soichiro Honda was a mechanic who developed his own design for piston rings in 1938 and attempted to sell them to Toyota. Soichiro Honda constructed a new facility specifically to supply Toyota, but soon the Honda piston manufacturing plant was almost completely destroyed during World War II. He picked-up the pieces and started fitting motors to bicycles to accomodate war torn Japan. Mr. Honda officially founded Honda Motor Co. on September 24th, 1948 in Tokyo, Japan. In 1949, Honda produced their first full-fledged motorcycle, the Dream D-Type. The Dream was powered by a 98cc 3 horsepower engine. Honda continued producing popular scooters throughout the 1950's. In 1958, American Honda Company was founded and a year later introduced the 1959 Honda C100 Super Cub to the United States market. The Honda Cub is the best-selling vehicle in history, having sold around 50 million units around the world. Honda countered public perception of motorcyclists as outlaws with their successful "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" advertising program. Honda introduced their new SOHC inline 4-cylinder 750cc in 1969, which was immediately successful and established the model as well as the Honda brand as a serious motorcycle maker. Since then, Honda has competed successfully in all sorts of motorcycle racing events, carrying this racing tradition over into its auto manufacturing and marketing.
http://powersports.honda.com/motorcycles/
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