Flanked on stage by three iconic merchandise that helped to determine Honda as probably the most revolutionary corporations in America – the Honda 50 motorbike (Tremendous Cub), the Honda Civic CVCC and the HondaJet – Honda co-founder Takeo Fujisawa was inducted into the Automotive Corridor of Fame on the awards ceremony final week at The Fillmore Detroit.

Honda Motor Co. Ltd, Chairman Seiji Kuraishi accepted the consideration on behalf of Fujisawa’s household, and Honda associates all over the world.

“The spirit and imaginative and prescient of Takeo Fujisawa continues to information Honda,” mentioned Kuraishi. “Our enterprise in America could have began with the Tremendous Cub motorbike, however attributable to his imaginative and prescient it continues with new sorts of mobility, together with the HondaJet.”

Fujisawa joins Honda founder Soichiro Honda, who was inducted into the Automotive Corridor of Fame in 1989, the primary Japanese automotive government so honored.

Born on November 10, 1910, Fujisawa initially aspired to turn out to be a trainer, however as an alternative labored as a salesman for a metal merchandise firm after which for a lumber firm when he met Soichiro Honda in August 1949, about one 12 months after the founding of Honda Motor Co., a small native enterprise in Hamamatsu, Japan. It was proper after the launch of the Dream D-Kind, thought-about to be Honda’s first full-fledged motorbike product.  Whereas the 2 males had been geared up with completely different personalities and talent units, Honda and Fujisawa hit it off virtually instantly and started deep discussions about their method to enterprise and goals for the longer term. 

Rapidly creating a trusting relationship, they established a shared imaginative and prescient for the way forward for the corporate with Fujisawa becoming a member of Honda Motor in October 1949.  As a president of the corporate, Honda retained duty for product design and expertise improvement and manufacturing operations, inventing many revolutionary automobiles together with Tremendous Cub, the world’s best-selling mobility product. Fujisawa backed him up as his proper hand with duty for the enterprise facet of the corporate, together with gross sales, finance and advertising. 

Fujisawa’s advertising savvy, robust enterprise sense, and eager capability to chart distinctive paths to progress proved the proper match to Soichiro Honda’s engineering acumen and imaginative and prescient for mobility. The partnership lasted 25 years, till March 1973 when Messrs. Honda and Fujisawa retired collectively. From the start, Fujisawa had an infinite influence on Honda’s enterprise globally and within the U.S., the place he performed the important thing position within the method to the American market. 

Fujisawa made a number of lasting and impactful enterprise selections which are nonetheless related right this moment:

Beginning Honda Enterprise within the U.S.
In 1959, and by then the senior managing director of Honda, Fujisawa made the difficult resolution to determine American Honda as Honda’s first subsidiary exterior Japan.  On the time, your complete U.S. motorbike trade bought not more than 60,000 items yearly — largely bigger bikes.  One member of the group advisable growth in Asia, the place small bikes from Europe, like these made by Honda, had been already in use.  He steered that America, the “land of the auto,” was too troublesome a goal for Honda.  Fujisawa had one other thought.  “On second thought, let’s do America,” he mentioned. “To reach the U.S. is to succeed worldwide. To take up the problem of the American market would be the most troublesome factor to do, nevertheless it’s a essential step in increasing the export of our merchandise.” With out Fujisawa’s management, Honda wouldn’t be the success story in the USA that it’s right this moment.

Creating Unbiased U.S. Supplier Community
Fujisawa adopted many revolutionary gross sales and advertising methods in Japan and the U.S. This included the choice to begin motorbike gross sales by establishing Honda’s personal seller community. Regardless of strategies that Honda ought to comply with the method of different Japanese corporations and depend on a buying and selling firm to launch U.S. gross sales, Honda solid relationships with many smaller sellers, even these with no historical past within the motorbike trade, and efficiently expanded enterprise from the West Coast throughout America.  By the mid-Nineteen Sixties, Honda was the best-selling motorbike model in America.

Establishing Separate R&D Firm
In 1960, primarily based on Fujisawa’s initiative, Honda R&D Co., Ltd. was created as a separate firm.  Fujisawa conceived the concept with two aims: to present Honda engineers the liberty to create new worth with out being constrained by the ups and downs of each day enterprise and to guard Honda’s capability to maintain this innovation sooner or later once they might now not depend on the genius of Soichiro Honda.   The brand new R&D firm ushered in an period of unbelievable technological and product innovation and getting into new enterprise areas together with the auto and aviation industries. Honda R&D’s give attention to analysis and creating new worth in mobility continues to at the present time. 

The company tradition Mr. Fujisawa helped foster is alive and effectively right this moment and can proceed as a driving drive for Honda in enterprise.  The dedication to behave as a superb company citizen is as necessary now because it has at all times been as Honda proceed to pursue The Energy of Desires and use expertise to assist transfer individuals and society ahead.