THE Automotive Hall of Fame has a new member this week, as Honda Motor co-founder Takeo Fujisawa was inducted at a ceremony at The Fillmore Detroit.
Fujisawa will now join Soichiro Honda in the Hall of Fame, after the Honda founder was inducted in 1989. Sochiro Honda made history when he was inducted, becoming the first Japanese automotive executive to be honoured in this manner.
Fujisawa’s Honda journey began in 1949, one year after the launch of the Dream D-Type, widely considered to be Honda’s first proper motorcycle. After making a career as a salesman in the steel and lumber industries, Fujisawa and Honda hit it off, and the two led the company as it went from strength to strength, and just a decade on from joining the company, the world’s best-selling motorcycle was born, the Honda Super Cub.
The two executives continued to work side-by-side until 1973, when the pair retired from the automotive industry together. The mark they left on the factory was lasting though, and it is said that Fujisawa and Honda’s combined business acumen and engineering skills helped to form the blueprint for Honda’s business moving forwards.
One of Fujisawa’s biggest feats was helping to launch the Japanese brand in the lucrative American market. At the time though, just 60,000 bikes were sold in the USA, and most of those were large-capacity bikes, quite at odds with the range on offer from Honda. While it would have been easier to focus on the Asian market first and foremost, although Fujisawa saw the USA as the land of the automobile, and is quoted as saying “to succeed in the U.S. is to succeed worldwide”.
