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Mr. Honda spent his early childhood helping his father, Gihei, a blacksmith, with his bicycle repair business. At the time his mother, Mika, was a weaver. At 15, without any formal education, Honda arrived in Tokyo to look for work. He obtained an apprenticeship at a garage in 1922, and after some vacillation over his employment, he stayed for six years, working as a car mechanic before returning home to start his own auto repair business in 1928 at the age of 22. In 1948 Honda began producing motorcycles as president of the Honda Motor Company. Honda turned the company into a billion-dollar multinational that produced the best-selling motorcycles in the world. Honda's excellent engineering and clever marketing resulted in Honda motorcycles out-selling Triumph and Harley-Davidson in their respective home markets. In 1959 Honda Motorcycles opened its first dealership in the United States. Honda remained president until his retirement in 1973, stayed on as director, and was appointed "supreme adviser" in 1983. His legendary status was such that People magazine placed him on their "25 Most Intriguing People of the Year" list for 1980, dubbing him "the Japanese Henry Ford." In retirement Honda busied himself with work connected with the Honda Foundation. He died in 1991 from liver failure. A dreamThroughout his life, Soichiro Honda never forgot the day he chased after the first motor car he ever saw. Long before it actually reached Yamahigashi, a small village in Japan's Shizuoka prefecture (now called Tenryū-shi), its own extraordinary noise heralded its imminent arrival. The small boy who heard the rumble was at first astonished, then excited, and finally enthralled, by it. Later he would describe that moment as one of those life-changing experiences. He was seeing his first car, and as he began to tremble the closer it drew, and the dust cloud of its passage engulfed him, something inside him was triggered off. "I turned and chase after that car for all I was worth," he said later. "I could not understand how it could move under its own power. And when it had driven past me, without even thinking why I found myself chasing it down the road, as hard as I could run." He stood little chance of ever catching up with it and the experience became a symbol for his life; he was always chasing something that was just beyond his reach. By the time the road was empty and the car long departed, the young boy continued to stand there breathing in its gasoline stench. When he came upon a drop of its precious lifeblood spilled on the dusty track, he dropped to his knees and sniffed the oily stain like a man in a desert smelling water.
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