 |
| Ryo Mukumoto, the youngest ever manager to oversee the development of a
new Honda Motor Co. car, poses with the S660 sports car, at Honda
headquarters in Tokyo in May. |
by Atsushi Kodera of
www.japantimes.co.jp
Honda Motor Co.’s name may currently be tainted with the
global air bag recalls, but it has proved that it remains an automaker
with an attitude, launching a new, genre-defying mini sports car
developed by a twenty-something pioneer.
Debuted on April 2, Honda’s S660 is a car of contradiction.
It’s a two-seat roadster that delivers a sports appearance for drivers
who seek that. Its strikingly sleek body turns heads, and it features a
dinky steering wheel and an extremely low driving position typical of
roadsters.
Moreover, small windows at the back can be opened
electronically so that the occupants can hear the roar of the
rear-mounted engine. Even the two heavy doors shut with satisfying
thuds.
Yet, it’s a
kei class minicar, with diminutive dimensions, limited power and the squeaky sound of an engine displacement of just 660 cc.
“What I had in mind was a car that’s fun to both look at and
drive. More than anything else, I wanted to pursue that aspect,” said
Ryo Mukumoto, who came up with the initial concept and led the
development of the unique car.
He said the idea owes partly to racing karts, which the
development team tried out at a track in the process of cementing S660′s
concept.
“Racing karts are slow, maybe like 50 kph to 60 kph maximum.
You can feel the wind, and the top speed may be low but there’s this
great feeling each time you turn a corner,” he said.
“When people talk about sports cars, they talk about
high-powered machines, they talk about speed exceeding 300 kph, they
talk about hundreds of horsepower and so on, but in fact there are
already lots of sports cars like that out there. The truth is, you can
enjoy a sports car without driving at high speeds.”
Its features place the S660 in a unique position in today’s
domestic auto market, where top sellers tend to be eco-friendly,
low-priced and practical.
The concept and the bold decision to pick a young manager
for the project were hailed by critics and Honda fans alike as signs
that Honda remains an automaker with attitude. Honda has received orders
for 8,600 units of S660 to be delivered by the end of the year and an
undisclosed number it plans to deliver by next June. Those placing an
order now will be told to expect delivery after that time, though the
company is working to boost the pace of production.
While it’s not exactly a leading earner for Honda, the car’s
success is a bright spot for the company that remains mired in massive
recalls related to defective air bags supplied by Takata Corp.
At the S660 launch in April, the media focus was equally on
Mukumoto himself, a previously unknown 26-year-old appointed to head the
development team to the surprise of many.
Picked for the job in 2010, just four years after he joined
Honda fresh out of high school, Mukumoto is a Cinderella of a man who
skipped having to tread the corporate ladder and leaped into the media
spotlight from an inconspicuous initial position as a concept
model-builder.
“My initial job was a ‘hard modeler,’ which was to use
wood-like plastics to create mock-up models that are realistic to the
touch. So, I was working with a chisel and plane,” he said.
Born and raised in Okayama Prefecture, Mukumoto was
convinced at a young age he wanted to work for Honda after reading a
children’s biographical manga depicting Soichiro Honda, who founded the
company after the war and nurtured it into becoming one of the nation’s
largest carmakers.
Chance smiled upon the self-described car enthusiast in 2010
when he still felt he “had a lot of catching up to do” with experienced
colleagues in modeling skills. That year, he won an in-house
competition that invited all ranks to submit ideas for a new car. His
quirky concept of a
yurusupo, or
yurui (laid-back) sports car, beat some 400 rival submissions, including from experienced engineers.
Using the Japanese word meaning “not tight” or “slack” — and
presumably aiming to borrow from the popularity of Kumamon and other
yuru-kyara
regional mascots — Mukumoto portrayed in his submission a sports car
that allows the driver to relax and enjoy the feel of driving, the
antitheses of cars aimed strictly at drivers intent on negotiating
curves at high speeds.
When the company assembled a car based on his concept as a
prize, it caught the eye of then-CEO Takanobu Ito, who put it into mass
production.
In March 2011, a development team was formed with 15
members, each responsible for a specific area of work, and at 22
Mukumoto was assigned to lead them, becoming the youngest person in the
company’s history to take a position craved by Honda engineers.
Mukumoto plays down talk of his skills, denying that he has any particular leadership or engineering genius.
“People talk about me a lot, but I want to note the team itself was unique,” Mukumoto said.
Instead of choosing veterans in engine design, chassis,
suspension, body and so on, the company formed the team by advertising
in-house for volunteers — “Like, ‘Hey, anyone want to do this?’,”
Mukumoto said — assembling a team of highly motivated individuals who
happened to be relatively young.
“In terms of enthusiasm, we are not at all inferior to the veterans; well, we may even be superior,” he added.
And they were all unique individuals, too, Mukumoto said, sounding proud of being part of a team with a difference.
“I remember being all jittery when I opened the door” at
Honda’s Tochigi Prefecture lab, away from Wako lab in Saitama Prefecture
where he had been, to meet the strangers he was to form the team with.
“Then I saw some people with really shocking appearances turn their
heads toward me. I mean, one had his hair tied like a samurai, another
had his hair dyed gold and another was a skin head.
“It was a team of individuals with so much character. So
much so that I immediately shut the door, saying, ‘Oops, wrong room,’ ”
he chuckled.
According to Mukumoto, the team operated in a democratic and
constructive manner, with older, experienced members supporting the
novice leader. There was a friendly, positive atmosphere in the team
that they now call a “family” where one member’s suggestion would be
batted back and forth with ideas coming from unexpected angles, Mukumoto
said.
“They were people who knew what they had to do, and it
wasn’t like me giving specific instructions. It was like we were forming
a circle, so to speak, not like someone leading a team. I guess real
leaders aren’t like me, but that’s how we operated.”
“I don’t know what I don’t know, and everybody in the team
was like, ‘He doesn’t know’, so they went out of their way and explained
what I didn’t know,” Mukumoto admits. “So it was like, working together
while being taught.”
As details were worked out on Mukumoto’s concept, his
original ideas went through significant changes. His outward design, for
example, was discarded and one developed by the Wako lab was adopted.
The overall concept itself was reworked from scratch, he said.
But asked what aspects of his ideas remain intact in S660, his answer was firm.
“When you think of roads in Japan, you can never ignore the
fact the speed range is low. So what I envisioned was a car that you can
enjoy to the maximum within the limitations of Japan’s ordinary roads,
and a sports car in the minicar class, which is familiar to us Japanese.
These are the concepts I had envisioned,” Mukumoto said.
“And the key was, it’s a car that anyone can enjoy at the
wheel,” he continued. “In other words, it’s not a car only experts can
enjoy, but a car enjoyable for experts, of course, but also for
beginners, and hopefully as many people as possible.”
Source;
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/14/business/corporate-business/sporty-quirky-hondas-s660-car-contradiction/#.VaUQ1rWd67R
