A US B-29 bomber attack destroyed Tōkai Seiki's Yamashita plant in 1944, and the Itawa plant collapsed on 13 January 1945 Mikawa earthquake. The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company and the Imperial Japanese Navy would be instrumental in the postwar period. Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production of military aircraft propellers.
Tōkai Seiki was placed under the control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (called the Ministry of Munitions after 1943) at the start of World War II, and Soichiro Honda was demoted from president to senior managing director after Toyota took a 40% stake in the company. After attending engineering school without graduating, and visiting factories around Japan to better understand Toyota's quality control processes known as " Five whys", by 1941 Honda was able to mass-produce piston rings acceptable to Toyota, using an automated process that could employ even unskilled wartime laborers. After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings to Toyota, but lost the contract due to the poor quality of their products. In 1937, with financing from his acquaintance Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki (Eastern Sea Precision Machine Company) to make piston rings working out of the Art Shokai garage. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where he tuned cars and entered them in races. Throughout his life, Honda's founder, Soichiro Honda, had an interest in automobiles. Honda's foray into four-wheelers started with the Honda T360 in 1963 Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models, while importing only 88,357. In 2013, Honda invested about 5.7% (US$6.8 billion) of its revenues in research and development. Honda has two joint-ventures in China: Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft and power generators, and other products. Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world in 2015. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a production of 400 million by the end of 2019, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. ( Japanese: 本田技研工業株式会社, Hepburn: Honda Giken Kōgyō KK, IPA: ( listen) / ˈ h ɒ n d ə/ commonly simply known as Honda) is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
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