Honda has been heavily involved in both motorcycle and car racing since the 1950's and had many wins since the 1960's. Soichiro himself was a racer. With his influences and many other talents, Honda has put his name on innumerous podiums. NSX is not an anomaly but a natural progression of the direction of Acura at the time. In the 1980's Honda was dominating the F1 circuits with the Mclaren with high profile driver's such as Senna and Prost. Producing the flagship NSX was not an accident but a careful tool to go upmarket.
Unfortunately after Soichiro's death, in the hands of these lousy executives, Acura failed to capture the upmarket like Lexus did. The sales of the RL have been poor with the V6. The Integra, TSX, TL, and CL are just higher end Hondas. Acura dealer services suck. On the other hand, Lexus is the only name from Japan that can compete in the $50k to $70k segment and certainly have stolen market shares from BMW, and MB.
Steve
i think you misunderstand me. DNA is what you were born with. honda's racing program grew out of the honda company, honda did not grow out of a racing program.
from wikipedia
Honda was a mechanic who, after working at Art Shokai, developed his own design for piston rings in 1938. He attempted to sell them to Toyota who rejected his first design. After two years of study and further refinement, Honda earned a contract from Toyota. He constructed a new facility to supply Toyota, but soon after, during World War II, the Honda piston manufacturing facilities were almost completely destroyed.
Soichiro Honda created a new company with what he had left in the Japanese market that was decimated by World War II; his country was starved of money and fuel, but still in need of basic transportation. Honda, utilizing his manufacturing facilities, attached an engine to a bicycle which created a cheap and efficient transport. He gave his company the name Honda Giken Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha which translates to Honda Research Institute Company Ltd. Despite its grandiose name, the first facility bearing that name was a simple wooden shack where Mr. Honda and his associates would fit the engines to bicycles. The official Japanese name for Honda Motor Company Ltd. remains the same in honor of Soichiro Honda's efforts. On 24 September 1948 the Honda Motor Co. was officially founded in Japan.
Honda began to produce a range of scooters and motorcycles and Soichiro Honda quickly recovered from the losses incurred during the war. Honda's first motorcycle to be put on sale was the 1947 A-Type (one year before the company was officially founded). However, Honda's first full-fledged motorcycle on the market was the 1949 Dream D-Type. It was equipped with a 98 cc engine producing around 3 horsepower. This was followed by a number of successful launches of highly popular scooters throughout the 1950s. Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) is a division of the Honda Motor Company formed in 1954.[1]
now contrast this with the history of ferrari.
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro is the name for the Gestione Sportiva, the division of the Ferrari automobile company concerned with racing. Though the Scuderia and Ferrari Corse Clienti continue to manage the racing activities of numerous Ferrari customers and private teams, Ferrari's racing division has completely devoted its attention and funding to its Formula One team, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. Scuderia Ferrari is Italian for "Ferrari Stable", though the name is liberally translated as "Team Ferrari."
Scuderia Ferrari was founded in 1929, and raced for Alfa Romeo untill 1939. Ferrari first competed in F1 in 1948 (the team's first F1 car was the Tipo 125 F1), making it the oldest and most successful team left in the championship. The team's current drivers are Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen, who has signed on to Ferrari for a three-year contract with the retirement of Michael Schumacher after the 2006 season, and its test drivers are Luca Badoer and Marc Gené. The team principal is Jean Todt, with Stefano Domenicali as sporting director, and its technical director is Mario Almondo. Both men are newly promoted following the promotion of Jean Todt and the departure of Ross Brawn, although Todt will remain as team principal for at least 2007. The team's numerous and ardent Italian fans have come to be known as tifosi.
1947 The beginning
The first Ferrari road car was the 1947 125 Sport, powered by a 1.5 L V12 engine; ***Enzo reluctantly built and sold his automobiles to fund the Scuderia.*** While his beautiful and blazingly fast cars quickly gained a reputation for excellence, Enzo maintained a famous distaste for his customers, most of whom he felt were buying his cars for the prestige and not the performance
[edit] 1961 The great walkout
Enzo Ferrari's strong personality had served his company and racing team well for decades. But internal tensions reached the boiling point in November of 1961 Long-time sales manager, Girolamo Gardini, had long chafed at Enzo's wife, Laura's involvement in the company. The two frequently argued, but their dispute became a crisis for the company when Gardini made an ultimatum to Enzo: If tensions continued, he would leave the company.
Enzo was never a man to accept a challenge to his authority, and he dealt with the situation with a typically heavy hand. Gardini was ousted, as was Scuderia Ferrari manager, Romolo Tavoni, chief engineer Carlo Chiti, experimental sports car development chief, Giotto Bizzarrini, and a number of others who stood by them. All were tremendous losses to the company, and many thought this might be the end of Ferrari. Indeed, the defectors immediately formed a new company, ATS, to directly compete with Ferrari on the street and the track, and took with them Scuderia Serenissima, one of Ferrari's best racing customers.
now the history of porsche
While products and technologies designed and created by Porsche now look back at more than 100 years of successful history, the first car bearing the brand name Porsche was homologated by the state government of Kärnten in Austria "only" 50 years ago on 8 June 1948 – the very first Porsche 356 to see the light of day. The intellectual and, indeed, spiritual "father" of the car was Professor Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche, who died on 27 March 1998 at the age of 88. Moving his Company during the war from Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen to the town of Gmünd in Kärnten, Ferry Porsche had started with his faithful employees in 1947 to "build a sports car of the kind I like myself" based on the Volkswagen Beetle developed by his father.
Without counting "Old No 1", exactly 52 units of the 356 model were built in Gmünd, all subsequent cars as of 1950 being assembled in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. Up to the end of production of the 356 in 1965 no less than 78,000 purchasers the world over had joined Ferry Porsche in his opinion, clearly expressing that they, too, liked the car. Other sports cars – in particular, of course, the 911 – quickly made the brand one of the most renowned and outstanding automobile manufacturers in the world consistently renowned for beautiful design, progressive and reliable technology.
Porsche's worldwide success in motorsport also started with the 356. For the very first model with chassis number 356.001 was only a few weeks old when, in July 1948, it scored its first class victory in the Innsbruck City Race. And to this very day hardly any other marque has brought home as many overall wins and world championships as Porsche. In the 24 Hours of Le Mans
you see the difference? ferrari reluctantly started building cars to fund its racing program, already in existence. ferrari's DNA is racing pure and simple. porsche began with a sports car that actually won races. honda began building mopeds then much later began racing. honda's DNA is building engines then mopeds.
S. Honda did once race himself. it was decades before he began the current Honda company .Born in 1906, Honda grew up in the town of Tenryu, Japan. The eldest son of a blacksmith who repaired bicycles, the young Soichiro had only an elementary school education when, in his teens, he left home to seek his fortune in Tokyo. An auto repair company hired him in 1922, but for a year he was forced to serve as a baby-sitter for the auto shop's owner and his wife. While employed at the auto shop, however, Honda built his own racing car using an old aircraft engine and handmade parts and participated in racing. His racing career was short lived, however. He suffered serious injuries in a 1936 crash. two years later he began a company making piston rings and airplane propellers which was completely destroyed during WW2. the remains of the company was sold to toyota. only after all this did he begin the Honda company that exists today, which began in a shack attaching engines to bicycles. the racing program began much later.
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when it was first debuted...It's lines are sleek, beautiful and timeless...I lusted after it from the day I saw it as a young punk..
