Wow, excellent read, check out the original source at the bottom for more pictures! Great read Brendan!
Soichiro Honda was an incredible,
self-taught engineer and his spirit can be found in the amazing Coupe 7
by
Brendan McAleer of
www.driving.ca
Thick,
white, oily smoke billows up from a 10-foot-high bonfire to ooze out
across the highway; like the incense you might find burning in a
Japanese temple, it’s both a purification and a blessing.
For
a moment, this little Honda is shrouded in smoke. But only briefly – on
the other side of the fire, the road stretches on ahead into the
mountain passes, mostly empty, bright and dry, endlessly climbing.
It’s
a pilgrimage of sorts, a trip to understand a dead man better in the
only true way possible: by seeing something he made, the last thing he
crafted. This modern Civic coupe is on its way to pay respect to a
far-off ancestor; I am on my way to meet Soichiro Honda.
Soichiro
Honda was born in a small village near Mount Fuji on November 17, 1906.
His father, Gihei, was a respected blacksmith, and his mother, Mika,
was a skilled weaver and artisan. Somewhere between the creativity
inspired by the loom and the technical mastery required by the forge,
Soichiro would find his calling.
His
inspiration, on the other hand, came as part of a chance encounter. One
day, while out playing, the young Honda saw a wheeled vision,
sputtering and clattering along through the streets of his tiny village.
His
jaw dropped. What was this? He sprinted after the car as it rumbled off
into the distance, running in the all-out way that only the very young
can manage. His nostrils smelled the tang of the exhaust. His ears
filled with the noise of internal combustion. When he finally stopped,
utterly winded, he saw a patch of oil and knelt down, rubbing it between
his fingers. It was the beginning of an obsession.
Nearly
a century later, the company that bears his name is the largest
manufacturer of small engines in the world, and a global powerhouse in
the automotive sphere. It makes luxury crossovers with trick
torque-vectoring rear differentials, plug-in hybrid sedans that actually
work for a full-sized family, an upcoming hybridized supercar that uses
electric engines up front to control its power, and efficient little
urban runabouts. And also a humanoid robot. And a jet. And lawnmowers.
Probably most familiar to the average Canadian is the car I’m travelling in, the ubiquitous Honda Civic.
We love these things, specc’ing options sparingly on our first new car
out of college, picking up a gently used one for our kids on the cheap,
downsizing to a fully loaded model when retirement means so-long
minivan. Heck, even our less-ethical citizenry loves the Civic: older
versions without alarms and immobilizers constantly make the most-stolen list.
This
one is a coupe, one trim level up from basic. It’s refreshed for 2014,
with a new front end that’s a bit more aggressive – as is the modern
trend – a bit more stiffening to the rear suspension, and the addition
of paddle-shifters and a CVT transmission. The 1.8L engine isn’t exactly
a powerhouse at just 143 hp, but the car zips past the semi-trailers
and claws its way up the mountain passes, while wind whips dust up from
bare patches between dirty drifts of snow.
If
you’re expecting Soichiro’s story to take the usual path of discipline
and rigorous study, it doesn’t. In fact, his first recorded creation was
a hand-crafted rubber stamp bearing his family name, used to forge his
parents’ signatures when he brought home terrible report cards from
school. It became a cottage industry of sorts for Honda, and he was soon
cranking out stamps for his schoolmates.
Naturally,
it wasn’t long before the jig was up: Soichiro didn’t realize that the
stamps only produced mirror images – fine for his symmetrical family
name, a problem for others. His father punished him more for the design
error than for the cheeky transgression.
At
15 years old, Honda left his village for an automotive garage in Tokyo.
He was armed with a broad array of mechanical skills as his father had
branched out into bicycle manufacture and repair, and the dexterity and
craftsmanship of both his parents practically hummed in his veins.
The
garage was called Art Shokai, and it fixed and serviced pretty much
anything. This being the 1920s, cars were very much unique and
customized affairs, so Soichiro was exposed to a huge variety of what
different engineers thought a car should be.
He
also assisted in the building and repairing of the racing cars that Art
Shokai produced, notably a Mitchell chassis into which was swapped the
engine out of a Curtiss A1 biplane. For his work, Honda received food,
lodging, and little else. The real value was in learning things no
formal education could impart.
In
contrast to other Japanese companies, where leadership came in a
natural progression through higher learning, Honda tended to bullhead
his way through problems. Like many geniuses who would go on to see
their names emblazoned on a grille, he relied heavily on his creativity
and sheer determination. Most of the time it worked, but sometimes it
wasn’t enough.
At
some point, Soichiro had found further refinement of his obsession,
slaving over an improved design for the piston ring. He hoped to sell
these to Toyota,
already a well-established company, and spent hours and hours refining
the metallurgy and design. He submitted thousands of the things for
approval. Toyota accepted 50, and then returned all but three based on
poor quality.
The
blow came as Honda was recovering from a brutal racing crash, where he
had fractured his arm and dislocated his shoulder. Rather than giving
up, he returned to school, forcing himself through a challenging program
of constant study at a gruelling pace. It is said that the combination
of work at the garage, his personal projects, and the constant pressures
of learning actually changed his face, adding years. In an interview
with any Honda employee, you will hear him referred to as the Old Man.
Then,
war broke out. Honda was spared military service because of
colour-blindness, but many of his workers were drafted off. His
piston-ring factory, now moderately successful, turned to wartime
production. American bombers eventually reduced it to rubble.
When
the war ended, Honda took his patents, sold his business to Toyota, and
spent a portion of the proceeds on a giant distilling apparatus, which
he kept in his backyard. In a time of despair, there was much drinking
of homemade whiskey.
However,
the Allies elected to rebuild Japan, and in the midst of that
reconstruction effort, Honda founded the company that would grow to
become the realization of his first obsession. At first, he adapted
tiny, readily available military radio-generators for use on mopeds –
these could run on pressed fir oil in gasoline-starved Japan – and later
expanded into motorcycle production. Honda’s first proper bike was
created in 1949: built of stamped-steel and painted a deep maroon, it
was called the D-type, and also the Dream.
I
arrange to meet Lindsay Thachuk just outside Vernon, at a viewpoint
overlooking placid Kalamalka Lake. You can see his car from a kilometre
away as it gleams in the morning sun, snow-white and seemingly
brand-new.
As
luck would have it, a coach full of Japanese tourists is also at the
lookout, snapping pictures of the glassy lake and the rocky hills, and
more than one or two casts a curious eye at the 40-year-old machine. It
is a 1972 Honda Coupe 7, the only such car in all of North America, and
possibly the only one in the world that’s had just one owner since new.
“I
saw it at the Melbourne auto show, and just knew that was the one I
wanted.” Thachuk, shortish, silver-bearded, and with a quick laugh and
an easy-going temperament, is clearly nuts about this little car. While
teaching in Australia in the 1970s, he’d grown tired of the recalcitrant
behaviour of his Mini, and wanted something a bit more reliable.
The
Coupe 7, and its slightly more-powerful variant, the Coupe 9, was the
last vehicle Soichiro ever personally touched. Intended to compete with
pedestrian fare like the Nissan Bluebird and the Toyota Corona, it was
Honda’s very first full-sized car, and the company’s first foray into
the proper passenger car market. Truth be told, it was a bit of sales
disaster.
It’s
a very odd car. The engine is air-cooled like a Volkswagen Beetle, but
mounted transversely in a conventional front-wheel-drive layout.
Front-wheel-drive wasn’t at all common in the 1970s, nor was this little
Honda’s other innovation, a fully independent rear suspension.
Honda
nearly killed his engineering team making this car. The production line
would be continually stopped as a new idea or refinement popped into
his head, and then the Old Man would be roaring and shouting to back the
line up, do it over, make it perfect. At one point, senior engineers
actually set up a desk intended to funnel Soichiro’s instructions so
that the production team didn’t lose their minds from constant
interruption.
It’s
a car full of clever little touches and wonderment. There’s no sump –
oil is fed through the engine by a pressurized oil tank, and a fan
routes air past the engine for cooling. Flip a switch and that hot air
comes directly into the cabin, making for a car that heats passengers up
in seconds.
The
wiring system is duplicated on each side of the car so a complete
failure can’t happen. The fuel pump is electric, also an innovation at
the time. In preparation for today’s trip, Thachuk lowered the car onto
its tires after a winter spent on jack stands, reconnected the battery,
turned the key one click and waited for the pump to prime – and then it
fired right up. He drives it very rarely, but it’s always ready to go.
Isn’t it a pretty little thing? They were never sold in Canada, but space was found in a container when Thachuk moved back here.
Grabbing
first with my left hand (it’s right-hand-drive), the Coupe 7 zips out
of the lot, and onto the winding cliffside road. Just about 96 hp is
available from the single-carb 1,300-cc engine, a power output that
reportedly had Eiji Toyoda asking his engineering team, “Why can’t we do
that?” For such a lightweight car, it’s plenty.
To
describe the drive in a single word, it’s effervescent. Thachuk’s Coupe
7 is beautifully preserved and almost entirely original, and its
planted, light, and thrilling to drive. You could zip to the corner
store in one of these for a fun jaunt, or you could drive it straight to
the Baja peninsula without discomfort. It’s more stable than you’d
expect for an old car, zippier than its contemporaries, lively and lithe
despite having the entry-level engine.
After
the protracted birth and weak sales of the Coupe 7, Honda retired in
1973. His engineers had just produced the Civic CVCC, a car that would
make his name a household world. He would live on to see his company
flourish, competing at the highest level in Formula One, creating Acura
and releasing the NSX. He died in 1991, at the age of 84.
These
days, Honda has taken criticism for losing some of that originality
once imparted by its thunderstorm of a founder. This new Civic is a bit
livelier than previous efforts, and perhaps a step in the right
direction.
But
here, on an old road in an old car, I can feel Soichiro’s true spirit
in the way his last car dances its way through the curves, that
air-cooled four-cylinder humming away happily. You can see him, perhaps,
a running boy, his legs windmilling, his laughing face, the shout of
joy as he reaches out with hand outspread, and finally brushes his
fingertips against the surface of his dream.
Source;
