未分类题

One could well imagine a dictionary entry that reads."Honda,n. automobile.cf. Af fordable,reliable,friendly. "Or in the words of the prospective car buyers portrayed in its U.S. television eommercials. "l&39;II take it. "Buyers all over the world did. pushing sales of Honda cars and Honda motorcyeles into the millions. Behind those definitions,though,there was a flesh-and-blood Honda. self-made giant of Japanese industry who hated boardrooms and preferred getting grease on his hands as he tinkered alongside his engineers with the little ears that would zoom across the Pacific and conquer America. When Soichiro Honda,84,died last week of liver failure,the company he founded in 1948 was ranked fourth in Japan and poised to displace Chrysler as the third largest producer of passenger cars in the U.S. Honda was fated to build cars, The son of a village black-smith.he was no more than six when, breathless and memorized. be ran through the streets of his native town,near Hamamatsu,chasing a Ford Model T. By 18 he bad built his first auto,powered by a discarded American airplane engine. The after months of the war provided him with priceless opportunities,especially after U.S. occupation forces purged the upper echelons(梯队) of Japanese industry and government ,opening the doors for outsiders, Honda decided to manufacture affordable motorcyeles that would allow the Japanese to move cheaply farms to cities to buy ,sell or work. Honda refused to obey the Ministry of lnternational Trade and Industry when it ordered him to stick to motoreycies. Japan,it said,did not need more than a few car manufacturers. Honda ignored them. He also helped establish the company policy of setting up factories in the U. S. when Japanese competitors such as Toyota saw no wisdom inbuilding abroad.