Soichiro Honda Lived a Wilder Life Than Most Might Think
Honda's founder is frequently celebrated for his genius, but he wasn't exactly perfect.
Skeletons In the Closet
To most in the car world, Soichiro Honda - the founder of the car company that bears his name - is a hero of sorts, a rebellious playboy who beat Detroit automakers at their own game. But in real life, as is often the case with genius, eccentric businessmen who soon found themselves buried in money, Mr. Honda also had some proverbial skeletons in his closet, as Jalopnik recently discovered.
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Getting a Chance
As most already know, Honda dreamed of becoming a mechanic when he was a kid, and when a number of them set off to rebuild their homes following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, he got his chance to prove himself in that regard. However, as the New York Times wrote in his 1991 obituary, Honda quickly found himself in trouble.
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Wild Living
"Eventually he returned to Hamamatsu to open a branch of the auto shop and quickly became something of a delinquent," the obituary reads. "He spent much of his time in the company of geisha, and once when he was drunk he went off the side of a bridge with several geisha riding in his car. Fortunately, everyone survived that incident."
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Drunken Escapades
This side of Mr. Honda was apparently rather well-known, as the book Driving Honda also tells a pretty dark tale about the automotive giant's escapades. "Honda became a very rich man," the book reads. "Never one to be stingy with newfound wealth, he took up motorcycle racing on the back of his new Harley-Davidson; he spent a great deal of time carousing with geishas on motorboats he built himself; he had an auto accident or two, going overboard on rickety bridges above streamlets; he drank a lot."
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Even Worse
However, driving off bridges drunk isn't the craziest thing that Honda did during his wild days of wealthy youth, as the Chicago Tribune revealed in a story from 1989. "In the formative stages of his company, Honda is variously reported to have tossed a geisha out a second-story window, climbed inside a septic tank to retrieve a visiting supplier’s false teeth (and subsequently placed the teeth in his mouth) and appeared inebriated and in costume before a formal presentation to Honda’s bankers requesting financing (the loan was denied)," the article reads.
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Even Wilder
Yes, it seems that Honda did in fact throw a woman out of a window, a fact that was also repeated in the book Honda Motorcycles. "Honda lived like a true playboy, carousing and often flirting with scandal, like the time when he drunkenly drove a car full of geishas off a low bridge, or another time when he unintentionally pushed a woman out of an open second-story window," the book reads. "The height of Honda’s decadence came at his wedding to Sachi Isobe in 1935, which reportedly ended with a well-lubricated Honda dancing nude."
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More To the Story
For most, this may come as a major surprise, given the fact that the public image of Soichiro Honda is that of a smiling, humble man who was both bold and an engineering genius. But like most of us, there's far more to the story, though in this case, it isn't all rosy as many would like us to believe.
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