Known as one of the most reliable car manufacturers in the world, if you own a Honda vehicle you will be able to seemingly drive it into the ground. Built to last, a premise that the company started with several decades ago, these 15 facts are all interesting pieces of information about this fantastic Japanese car manufacturer.

1. The company was founded by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa, Honda being the engineer and Fujisawa being the businessman

2. Honda and Fujisawa officially founded the company on 24 September 1948

3. The pair got the trademark for Honda in 1953 in Japan, but it took a further 5 years for them to get it in the United States of America

4. Initially, Honda dealers were only showrooms for motorbikes, as the company didn’t begin producing cars for 15 years

5. It is widely accepted that the first mass produced car by the company was in fact a pickup truck. The T500 was built for 4 years from June 1963 to August 1967 and was available with a 356cc or 531cc engine

6. Months after the T500 was released, Honda dealers started selling the very first Honda car, the S500. Having a 531cc, the S500 was actually a slight variation of a car that was designed but never built a year earlier, the S360

7. According to the official data provided by Honda for 2007, the company’s main market, in terms of overall revenue, was North America, where the amount of revenue was 5,980,875,000,00 Yen (or approximately 41.69 billion pounds)

8. The second biggest market was Japan, with 1,681,190,000,000 Yen (11.71 billion pounds), followed closely by Asia with revenue of 1,283,154,000,000 Yen (8.94 billion pounds)

9. The company is currently run by Takanobu Ito, a role he took on in 2009. Ito took over from Takeo Fukui, who started his career at Honda as an engineer in 1969

10. Aside from cars and motorbikes, Honda is also massively involved in robotics.

11. ASIMO is the most famous of Honda’s robotic developments, the 4 foot 3 inch robot that was first created in 2000

12. It actually took almost 15 years for ASIMO to be produced, with the very first experimental models being developed in 1986

13. In addition to cars, motorbikes and robotics, Honda has also branched out into the field of aircraft manufacturing. Tadacip Creating 2 prototypes of their HA-420 HondaJet, each of them costs around 2.5 million pounds to create according to an article on CNN Money on 7 March 2008 and they should be a particularly luxurious business-like aeroplane when launched in 2011

14. The very first hybrid car in the US market was a Honda. Known as the Insight, it was an electric hybrid and production started in 1999, ending initially in 2006. However, it was started once again in 2008 and has achieved much success over the past decade

15. In 2009, the company recorded a revenue amount of 120.27 billion US dollars, the equivalent of approximately 78.38 billion pounds.

Author Bio: Jardine Motors Group UK operates a large portfolio of specialist franchises of the world’s most prestigious marques, including Levitra href=”http://www.jardinemotors.co.uk/honda/”>Honda dealers.

Category: Cars and Trucks
Keywords: honda dealers, honda, car dealers, honda dealership