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The little step-through that changed transportation around the globe and helped Honda achieve Grand Prix Racing success, technical dominance, and massive wins in automobiles, the 1958 Super Cub hit a target for buyers no one had yet considered. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss how Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa helped conceive of this little motorcycle to function easily in broad conditions and the unique features that helped it fly off the showroom floor from the very beginning.

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00:00:00Welcome to the Cygo World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.

00:00:06This week we're going to talk about the Honda Super Cub story.

00:00:11The little motorcycle that changed the world.

00:00:15Well, it put the world on two wheels. It put the world in transportation.

00:00:19That's what it did.

00:00:20In 2005, they'd sold 50 million by then, over its life.

00:00:27What did you think of the Cub when it came out, Kevin?

00:00:30I didn't really think much about it, except that it was a curiosity from Japan, and naturally everyone wondered what would be next.

00:00:43And it wasn't long before Honda was a well-established brand name, because they saw to it.

00:00:51They did it intentionally.

00:00:52Mr. Honda and his partner, Takeo Fujisawa, realized that unless they could produce world standard motorbikes,

00:01:08they could not resist a foreign invasion of motorcycles into Japan from well-established producers who presumably knew a great deal more than Honda did about the business.

00:01:24Well, that wasn't really the case.

00:01:29But what happened was that by 1948, Mr. Honda had established an R&D center, a technical center.

00:01:43The following year, 1949, Mr. Fujisawa joined, who was an experienced businessman.

00:01:51But above all, he was a plain-speaking man of common sense.

00:01:59And it proved to be a valuable combination for many years, because Mr. Honda was all for, let's do it today.

00:02:11I have an idea.

00:02:12Let's build it.

00:02:12And Mr. Fujisawa said, that may have been good in 1924 when you were working on your racing car, but we're talking about big money here, and we might want to take some thought before we plunge in.

00:02:29And that combination of urgent innovation and business management and caution turned out to make Honda preeminent among the 200 manufacturers of motorcycles that at one time existed in post-war Japan.

00:02:53So, that was one aspect of the affair.

00:03:05Mr. Honda had, as a child, according to legend, run after the first automobile that came through their part of Japan.

00:03:18And he said afterward that the smell of the exhaust was so unlike anything he had ever experienced.

00:03:28It was so exotic and seemed to be beckoning to him to follow that he ran after the thing until he couldn't continue.

00:03:40He went to Tokyo and determined to grasp this new technology and become a participant.

00:03:59And in 1922, he went to work at a garage, Art Shokai.

00:04:05And fortunately for him, in 1923, there was the great earthquake.

00:04:12The building fell down.

00:04:15All of the employees except the owner and Mr. Honda went home to their families.

00:04:23And the two of them received from auto manufacturing wonderful training that made them more than garage men.

00:04:38And in 1924, Mr. Honda began to build his racing car, which had a Curtis OX5 V8 aircraft engine making most of 100 horsepower at 1400 RPM.

00:04:52And we've talked about Curtis before.

00:04:55He was another one of those thunderous, get it done today people.

00:05:03And Mr. Honda went forward to become something of a wheel in the activity.

00:05:14And during the war, he decided he would manufacture piston rings.

00:05:22And 12 miles northwest of Tokyo is the giant Nakajima aircraft plant, aircraft engine plant.

00:05:31Mr. Honda's piston rings were rejected.

00:05:35They didn't meet standards.

00:05:37So, he thought to himself, could it be that enthusiasm is not the answer to every problem?

00:05:50He went to consult a metallurgist at a university.

00:05:55And the metallurgist said, here are the qualities required for a successful piston ring.

00:06:01So, he got right into it and soon was making piston rings that were accepted.

00:06:12The war came to a thunderous end.

00:06:15Everything was knocked flat and Mr. Honda found that he could buy military surplus communications generators powered by little two-stroke engines.

00:06:32He contrived to attach the two-stroke engines as clip-on motors on bicycles.

00:06:40And soon he was selling all he could get because there was no street car.

00:06:48There were no bus services.

00:06:50There was very little of anything.

00:06:52And there is one of these clip-on bicycle engines on display in the Motegi Museum.

00:07:03And it looks just like you would expect.

00:07:06It's a little something or other attached down near the left end of the rear axle.

00:07:12Well, it soon came to mind that the supply of engines would come to an end.

00:07:20They were 50 cc's.

00:07:22They made one half a horsepower.

00:07:26You can imagine a Japanese communications unit during the war in the rainy jungle somewhere trying to start their two-stroke engine so they could broadcast and receive.

00:07:41However, he continued as he had begun with two-stroke engines.

00:07:48Now, the official line that you will get from people who came to Honda without reading the books is that Mr. Honda hated two-strokes.

00:07:59He always hated them.

00:08:00And he was a four-stroke man born and bred.

00:08:04In fact, when Mr. Fujisawa said to him, you know, my wife said something to me the other night that I think might be important for us.

00:08:15Oh, oh, what's that?

00:08:16Well, she said our new model, Dream D, which was much more than a 50.

00:08:26It was a robust two-stroke motorcycle with all the mod cons.

00:08:33She said they smell bad.

00:08:37And they sound like they're not working properly.

00:08:40I don't know, Kevin.

00:08:41They smell bad.

00:08:42Well, we don't know what kind of two-stroke oil they were using.

00:08:47That's a fair point.

00:08:48But what smells better in certain settings?

00:08:52Well, yes, there's another hole around here.

00:08:56They were really smoky.

00:08:58They were very smoky, particularly at the time.

00:09:01So, Mr. Honda replied, I can engineer around those things.

00:09:07There are special oils we can get that don't smoke.

00:09:10We can do this, that, and the other thing, Mr. Fujisawa said.

00:09:14Much simpler to build four-stroke motor.

00:09:18Oh.

00:09:19Now, this turned out to be an important turning point, the first of a number in which Mr. Honda

00:09:29was going in one direction and Mr. Fujisawa was going in another direction.

00:09:35And Mr. Fujisawa said, get on track, man.

00:09:42We're going this way.

00:09:43Well, let's talk about the landscape for this type of transportation in 1958.

00:09:50It was largely two-stroke.

00:09:51It was the simple, smoky, inefficient.

00:09:55I mean, it was efficient by virtue of being tiny.

00:09:58That was it.

00:10:00And it ran.

00:10:01Starts, runs.

00:10:03Big advantage.

00:10:04Yeah, just goes.

00:10:05Yeah, goes.

00:10:05Very simple.

00:10:06But this was a new way, and it addressed some really specific problems that people were

00:10:13facing.

00:10:14Which was, the first one of which was that Japan's 66 largest cities had been burnt out by the

00:10:21incendiary raids flown by the B-29.

00:10:25And this was widespread all over Japan.

00:10:31Wherever B-29s could reach, they burned down the cities.

00:10:36So that this took place in the last five months of the war, one additional city on average

00:10:42burnt out every 2.3 nights.

00:10:45So if there was a place where you could find work and it was too far to bicycle, you were

00:10:53up the creek.

00:10:55But if you had a motorized form of transportation, aha, your radius of action was greatly increased.

00:11:04And so were your opportunities.

00:11:07So at the same time, Honda had decided in the middle 50s that the company was going to compete

00:11:20at the Isle of Man.

00:11:23Mr. Honda made repeated trips by air to the United States and Europe to buy machine tools.

00:11:30In 1951, he took $165,000 and went to the U.S. to buy high-grade machine production equipment.

00:11:46And people said to him, well, you know what the great calligrapher said, the poor draftsman

00:11:55blames his brush.

00:11:58And Mr. Honda said, that's okay for calligraphers.

00:12:01I'm not one.

00:12:03I know that we have to have machine tools that can produce our product at a low cost that

00:12:11more people can afford.

00:12:12So the calligrapher went back to graceful figures.

00:12:19And Mr. Honda signed up for $1.3 million worth of tooling off the cuff.

00:12:29He was willing to take, this man was willing to take risks.

00:12:34What a huge bet.

00:12:35And they sort of skated right on the edge of the water.

00:12:42Talk about thin ice.

00:12:44They were famous for making their payment at the last possible instant.

00:12:50And nothing ventured, nothing gained.

00:12:55So they were planning already by 1956, what they would do in the Isle of Man and how they

00:13:07would do it.

00:13:09Honda's Research Institute was studying the high-speed internal combustion engine.

00:13:16The remarkable thing about Super Cub 1958 was that it made nine times the horsepower of

00:13:27the 50cc clip-on engine, two-stroke, nine times the power.

00:13:34Why?

00:13:35Because it peaked at 9,500 RPM.

00:13:40None of this 4,500 RPM Cushman scooter scene.

00:13:44These were practically little racing engines.

00:13:48And by virtue of constant testing, they made them reliable.

00:13:56They began talking about this product because they understood they could never get anywhere

00:14:03selling motorcycles to daring young men in black leather coats.

00:14:09That was the image of the motorcycle.

00:14:11They didn't want that image.

00:14:14They knew that market was quite limited.

00:14:18They needed to make transportation that anyone could use, including women who had spent much

00:14:28of their lives in kitchens and without getting much of a feel for gadgetry.

00:14:34So, Fujisawa and Honda went to Europe and they looked at the market there.

00:14:42They saw the Mobi Solex with its front drive, with the engine in front of the steering head,

00:14:49driving the front wheel through a roller.

00:14:52Hmm.

00:14:53Pass on that.

00:14:54They went to Italy and they saw the scooters that were coming from Lambretta and Vespa.

00:15:05Wheels are too small for our world.

00:15:08They will fall into a pothole and an endo will result.

00:15:14And they understood that a certain level of power was necessary.

00:15:19They wanted bigger wheels, but it had to be an automatic machine.

00:15:25No teaching people coordination of clutch and throttle.

00:15:29It has to be, as Mr. Honda put it, the noodle boy has to balance the noodle tray in one hand

00:15:38and operate the machine with the other.

00:15:40Well, that's what we see in the paddock all the time.

00:15:44None of this clutch business.

00:15:45You got to tow your tires behind on your whatever.

00:15:48It makes it a lot easier if you don't have to mess with slipping a clutch.

00:15:53So, they set these standards for what they wanted.

00:16:00But the motorcycle, the Super Cub, the clip-on motor was called the Cub.

00:16:06Super Cub was not designed.

00:16:11There were no rows of drafting boards with powerful illumination and draftsmen at each one.

00:16:17Instead, there was a room in which Mr. Honda, Mr. Fujisawa, and several other engineers milled about talking about this.

00:16:30What they intended to build.

00:16:33This project was called Operation Special M.

00:16:40I like it.

00:16:42And they looked at 18 and 19-inch wheels, which were respectively the sort of the Italian and the British standards.

00:16:54But they were, they ended up making a motorcycle that was too tall for many Japanese.

00:17:01So, they hit upon 17 inches, two and a quarter inch tire section.

00:17:07And Mr. Honda was shown various mock-ups.

00:17:14And one of the European manufacturers that was doing well had the fuel tank just behind the steering head.

00:17:22And Mr. Honda didn't like that.

00:17:25And he said, stepping into this bike has to be completely easy with nothing to snag your clothing on or to impede your heedless natural movement.

00:17:41So, the fuel went under the seat.

00:17:44And the engine was the responsibility of a young fellow called Daiji Hoshino.

00:17:54And in overall charge of the project was Toshiro Harada, whose name comes up again and again in later times, having been manager on the CB450 twin and then the CB750 four-cylinder.

00:18:19CB450, that was the one with the torsion valve springs, was it?

00:18:24Yes, sir.

00:18:25They also built a racing engine for automobile with torsion springs.

00:18:31It was a sort of an interesting sidelight.

00:18:35It wasn't continued.

00:18:37We could do lots of, we should do a podcast that's Honda's interesting sidelights.

00:18:42I guess we could really.

00:18:44Yeah.

00:18:44There's plenty to talk about there.

00:18:47There certainly is.

00:18:48Well, I mean, so the 50, one of the principal qualities that you're talking about is that ease of stepping over, just like your Vespa, which had, you know, set the pace in Europe, but it had leg protection and it took the engine and laid it down.

00:19:04So, all that nasty business is kind of below the belt line and you just step on and away you go.

00:19:10Yep.

00:19:11Yeah.

00:19:12And one engineer was given the job of creating a clutch that would be unseen and unknown.

00:19:23And what he came up with was a device, which when you move the shift pedal, the first part of the stroke lifted the clutch, disconnecting the engine from the drive system.

00:19:37And the second part of the stroke rotated the shift drum, moving the gears to engage the next ratio.

00:19:47So, and then when you took your foot off, the shift drum stayed where it was on its detent and the clutch re-engaged and you continued on your way.

00:20:00Weird sidelight for me here.

00:20:02Sorry, but I got to put this in there.

00:20:04Oh, yeah.

00:20:051958 Triumph Trophy.

00:20:06I owned one of those, 650, first year for the alloy head, single carburetor.

00:20:14It was the first fork that had damping in it from Triumph, as I understand it.

00:20:18It had a little bit of rebound damping, apparently.

00:20:23It had slick shift and my slick shift was still intact.

00:20:26So, there was a rocker inside the gearbox with a little roller.

00:20:30And when you shifted it up or down, it would disengage the clutch.

00:20:37And mine actually worked.

00:20:39Usually, people took that out, but mine worked.

00:20:42And you could, with some difficulty, you could start from a dead stop and slip the clutch.

00:20:49It's just that the band of engagement was a little too abrupt.

00:20:53Yeah.

00:20:54But shifting up and down, it was really no problem.

00:20:56And also, it was a boon to the races that you had to start with your left, your clutch hand on your head.

00:21:04The desert races, you had to be like this.

00:21:06Your bike could be running, but you had to be in neutral.

00:21:10And so, for those guys, they could stick their foot on the gear lever and use the dirt as your clutch in that case.

00:21:16That's your friction zone.

00:21:17Yes, indeed.

00:21:18So, you just hit it and away you go.

00:21:19So, anyway, Slick Shift, opening up the Triumph motorcycle experience to extra hundred of people.

00:21:27Yes.

00:21:29I don't want to rush into the rest of this story without recounting my amazement at how Japan,

00:21:41basically a feudal nation in 1853, was able to make a nationwide decision to industrialize.

00:21:55This was not something accidental.

00:21:59Japan had already learned about firearms through Portuguese traders

00:22:04and had developed her own excellent firearms manufacturing capability.

00:22:11But the firearms were so disapproved of, a fry cook from the seaside must not shoot a titled person on horseback.

00:22:25This is completely improper.

00:22:29Despite that, Japan decided not to let itself fall into what had happened to China.

00:22:36The Western powers had looked upon China as a disorganized place that needed their guiding hands.

00:22:44And China was chopped up into zones of influence, British, German, U.S., etc.

00:22:52And Japanese leadership was terrified that Japan would be next.

00:22:57Here came Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 with his four black ships saying,

00:23:05Knock, knock, I know you're in there.

00:23:07We're coming to trade with you, like it or not.

00:23:12So, they went about it in an extremely methodical way.

00:23:17They brought in foreign engineers and designers and they mastered the Industrial Revolution to such an extent and so quickly

00:23:29that when the Russian fleet was sent to punish them for some imagined real or imagined misdeeds,

00:23:39the Russians met the Japanese fleet at the Straits of Tsushima and they were destroyed by the Japanese fleet.

00:23:52They had learned to make enormous guns to bore them, to liner them, to aim and serve them.

00:24:01And this was imposed upon a very traditional culture.

00:24:10And I think that's really remarkable.

00:24:14I mean, Germany did a similar thing in terms of education, right?

00:24:17They made a shift in the 1800s where they were really leaning on technical education.

00:24:22The Iron Chancellor established a system of higher technical universities where such things,

00:24:31such arcana as manufacturing engineering.

00:24:35Let's design this product not only to work, but to be easy and low cost to manufacture.

00:24:43Yes, and that was the work of the Iron Chancellor, who is so hated by many on the left to this day.

00:24:59But he basically told the leadership in Germany, who were just men of the soil grown important.

00:25:09He said, you want to be a nation, you want to be maybe number one nation, you're going to need a workforce that can read.

00:25:21Oh, what if they read the wrong thing?

00:25:24Well, that's a chance you're going to have to take.

00:25:27I can't read the wrong thing.

00:25:30But it'll cost a lot of money.

00:25:33So will getting defeated by Napoleon, which nearly happened.

00:25:38I mean, it was, want to become part of France?

00:25:44Oh, well, I suppose not.

00:25:46So, yes, these, the Industrial Revolution had a momentum of its own.

00:25:52You might like the idea of continuing to sip a tall, cool one on your porch watching the sun go down.

00:25:59But here comes the Industrial Revolution.

00:26:02That smoke sack wasn't there yesterday.

00:26:04So Japan was really a big surprise this way, because they realized that to be an independent nation in the times that they could see were coming, you've got to have your own industry.

00:26:19Yeah, SKB shotguns.

00:26:21That was like late, I think, late 1850s.

00:26:25Sakaba, I think is the guy's name.

00:26:27We have an SKB over under 20-gauge, Japanese-made.

00:26:31They've since moved to production.

00:26:32They got acquired, and I think they stopped making guns in Japan in 2010 and went to Turkey, as many gun makers have.

00:26:40Well, during the war...

00:26:41SKB, yeah, it's a beautifully made, beautifully made, beautiful shooting gate gun.

00:26:46Marvelous.

00:26:47During the war, Yamaha made propellers instead of musical instruments.

00:26:53But this whole thing, this industrial changeover, has made people like Mr. Honda.

00:27:04And he actively rejected the past.

00:27:08When he was asked to one of these stuffy meetings where you must obey the dress code, he came dressed for work.

00:27:20He said, I work.

00:27:24I am a worker.

00:27:25This is my working outfit.

00:27:27If you don't like it, get used to it.

00:27:32And so they carefully planned Super Cub to be the vehicle that it became.

00:27:44But it was an enormous gamble, because we all know how many times people make plans.

00:27:52The plans are extremely plausible.

00:27:54You look at every point.

00:27:55Yes, this one makes sense.

00:27:56This makes sense.

00:27:57And then it's a flop.

00:27:59So ultimately, you're saying, we've tooled this thing, and we hope people will buy it, but maybe they won't.

00:28:08That's business.

00:28:09So when the machine Super Cub was revealed, the main dealer in downtown Tokyo sold 600 the first day.

00:28:22And it's been a hit ever since.

00:28:28And we've all seen those marvelous videos of an entire family in Burma or Thailand or anywhere around the world.

00:28:38Some of the people sitting among the others are holding crates of chickens, and somehow...

00:28:46No, it's remarkable the centeredness of people who have grown up doing remarkable things with small transportation.

00:28:54It's just wonderful.

00:28:56It is.

00:28:56It's just rebar and furniture, and we saw a family of five.

00:29:03We were in India, Jeff Allen and I, when the unit construction 500 Royal Enfield was produced, released, and we were riding around doing photos, and we were doing a photo shoot.

00:29:16And this family of five came by on a, like, one of the 100s, like a hero or something, came motoring by.

00:29:24Family of five.

00:29:26This little girl sitting on the gas tank, holding the handlebars at the very front.

00:29:32The man operating it, and then a woman, a kid, and then the woman sitting side saddle with the sorry guard, holding a bag of rice and holding a baby.

00:29:41And what a way to move the family.

00:29:46You couldn't help but be close.

00:29:49It's amazing how adaptable people are and what a great job you can do with what you have if you focus on it.

00:29:57Well, when Mr. Oshino, the engine guy on the Super Cub project, was asked, how can this engine make nine times the power of the first engine Honda produced?

00:30:14He said, this engine is the outcome of our preparations for the Isle of Man.

00:30:25Because what other engine, what other production engine in the world in 1958 was peaking at 9,500 RPM?

00:30:39Nothing.

00:30:40And they made it stone reliable.

00:30:47And in fact, that may have been the origin of Honda's 2,600-hour durability test, which was, I learned about that from the Honda, American Honda's racing manager.

00:31:06And he said he didn't know whether that test was still being used or whether design had moved far enough forward that basically it was incorporated in the design process.

00:31:22But Mr. Fujisawa looked at the new machine and he said, oh, we will sell 30,000 of these.

00:31:34And the other engineers looked at him and they said, 30,000, oh, per month.

00:31:44And by October of 2017, 100 million had been sold.

00:31:52That's eight years ago.

00:31:54They're still making them.

00:31:56It is the most produced vehicle in the history of the world.

00:32:02Well, that means from 2005 to 2017, they added 50 million.

00:32:07Because in 2005, that's when they hit the 50 million milestone.

00:32:10So that's pretty remarkable.

00:32:11Yeah.

00:32:13It's like 4 million a year.

00:32:15So all this, all the preparation that they made and the study, Mr. Fujisawa and Mr. Honda going to Europe, the discussion of those people in that room, this motorcycle was not designed.

00:32:35They created it from their ongoing discussion, day after day, until they had what they thought the market required.

00:32:50They weren't thinking about motorcycles or motorcycle people.

00:32:54They were thinking about transportation and everyone who needed it.

00:33:01Good way to think.

00:33:05So, it was a little two-valve engine, air-cooled.

00:33:12Originally, the cylinder and the head were iron because it eliminated valve guides, valve seat inserts, an aluminum, a cast aluminum cylinder, and an iron liner.

00:33:30These features later were added in 1966.

00:33:35But what this motorcycle did was it bankrolled Honda Ambition.

00:33:44Already in 1954, they were constructing a plant in which they hoped to build trucks.

00:33:51This steady source of income enabled them to go to any machine tool manufacturer in the U.S. or Europe and say, here's my order.

00:34:06And when Edward Turner, the Englishman who designed the Triumph Speed Twin, which was first produced in, what, 36, 37, a prominent person in the British motorcycling scene,

00:34:26went to Japan in 1960, went to Japan in 1960, went to Japan in 1960, and had the tour.

00:34:31And he came back to Britain and he wrote a report.

00:34:35I know we've talked about this in another, in a previous podcast, but it bears repeating.

00:34:41Because he gave warning, he said, these people are using the latest manufacturing techniques to provide features that we can't provide at a lower price than we're charging for the rather antiquated models we offer.

00:35:02Oh, there's something from, oh, that's a, what nonsense.

00:35:10Because the terrible thing about being first in the Industrial Revolution, because bear in mind that in the late 18th century, there was Newcomen using atmospheric,

00:35:24using the vacuum created by condensing steam to make a suction engine that could pump out mines, you know, you, you dig a hole anywhere in England and it fills up with water.

00:35:39That's a well.

00:35:41And you dig a mine and it's going to be uninhabitable by virtue of being full of water.

00:35:49So they needed pumps and what had gone before was, of course, mine ponies going round and round in a circle, underground, spending their whole lives underground, operating mechanism to pump out the mine.

00:36:07And Newcomen is regarded as one of the leading characters in Britain's Industrial Revolution.

00:36:15When you're first with the Industrial Revolution, you know that you're the teacher.

00:36:22You're helping these lesser nations whose industrial revolutions are pitiful, wilted little seedlings.

00:36:31And if you don't watch what they're doing, they will grow as Honda did and the other Japanese manufacturers to be able to do things you never dreamed of.

00:36:47And so Edward Turner's report was ignored and they had to ignore it because they didn't have the credit with which to go to machine tool companies and say,

00:37:03I'll have that one and that one and that one, which Mr. Bloor was able to do with money that he had made in real estate.

00:37:10I visited the engine machining line at Bloor's Place early in this century and there were all these machine tools with automatic transfer line moving the parts from one machine to the next, to the next.

00:37:30And each shift was operated by two people.

00:37:39It was not a situation where there were 800 machine tools on the production floor and people rushing this way and rushing that, pushing castings on little carts with a trained machinist at each mill, at each lathe, at each grinder.

00:37:58No, that was all built into the system.

00:38:02No, you watched it.

00:38:03I watched it happen at Royal Enfield.

00:38:06I went to visit in 08 and they were, they were two companies that it appeared at the time.

00:38:11There was the traditional line still making the bullet 500 largely as it had been since 55 or so.

00:38:17And it was a big, dark, messy place and guys were bolting things to a plate and then grabbing a big, you know, lever to pull the quill down and cutting fluid was hosing off on it.

00:38:30And then you went to the 500s to the new 500, the UCE side, and it was brightly lighted, clean as could be.

00:38:39Guys are wearing white shirts and the engines are on a line and they go to get the cases put together.

00:38:47CNC sealant, a machine just lays a perfect bead on the engine case.

00:38:52It's like a pen.

00:38:54It's like a wonderful pen that never runs out of ink.

00:38:58Just crazy awesome.

00:39:02The vision that it takes to put something together like that, you know.

00:39:09And having that reference, having a reference of saying like, let's see how guys do this.

00:39:14You know, Mr. Honda goes to England and America and, you know, if you went to Harley, you would have seen the guy like beating frames with a hammer and as they did when they were doing their SIF bronze welding.

00:39:28Yeah, to put the tubes into the machine casting.

00:39:32Yeah, cast lug with, you know, holes in it for the tubes and you put the tube in and they would stick it into a forge, basically a pit of probably coal.

00:39:42So, and pump the air, get it real hot and then, you know, melt that stuff in there and that was your frame.

00:39:50And then it would be heat distorted and they'd have to try and hit it with hammers and then big bars to tweak them into true.

00:39:58And you can go and look at that and say, okay, that's how they're doing it.

00:40:00What do we, how do we get all those steps out?

00:40:03And it's wonderful to have a reference as you're saying, you know, you're going in and you're starting fresh.

00:40:07And you can say what's, what's good or bad about what's happening and make your own decisions.

00:40:13And which, which Yamaha model is it that frame is two pieces and there's no welding at all?

00:40:21Yeah, the, it was the FZ09, later MT09.

00:40:26And it's, they're not the only ones who've done that.

00:40:28No, not the only ones.

00:40:29But yeah, that, that was a, so that's the Yamaha frame and it's, it's two halves that are right and left that are very accurately cast, controlled fill, basically net size.

00:40:45You know, there's no, there's not a lot of messing around where a lot of casting stuff, you make it too big and then you machine off the stuff that's left over.

00:40:53You can get the shrinkage pretty close.

00:40:55This is super accurate.

00:40:57Steering had two pieces, uh, break off bolts that bolt that together.

00:41:02And you essentially had a finished frame out of the mold, out of the mold, kiss the machine here, kiss the machine here.

00:41:08And maybe it's some engine pickup points, as I recall, and they bolted together and there's no welding, no other done, just done.

00:41:15So you had a, you know, modern Japanese motorcycle with that wonderful engine in it and a great looking, beautifully finished chassis, a motorcycle made in Japan that was extremely cost effective.

00:41:31That came in steps.

00:41:33In 1980, uh, Yamaha sent square tube aluminum frame test articles to the Amsterdam, uh, racing center.

00:41:45And Kenny said, every day we ran those bikes in tests, they cracked.

00:41:52And constant communication with Japan resulted in improvements.

00:41:58The joints became more organic rather than just being two pieces of square tubing stuck together.

00:42:07Uh, the material was improved.

00:42:10The welding techniques were improved.

00:42:12The design was improved.

00:42:13The racers eventually were, uh, steering head and rear swing arm uprights were machined from solid.

00:42:24And then the rest was either sheet metal or extrusion.

00:42:28It all had to be painstakingly welded together.

00:42:32And gradually they reduced the number of welds systematically.

00:42:37Now, one way to look at this is to say, they sent home the people who formerly did those jobs and said, you're retired.

00:42:46Now here's your pension.

00:42:48This is a dilemma for my, for, for modern life.

00:42:52No question about it.

00:42:53But that's what happens because if company A is doing this, company B cannot thrust its chin up dramatically and say, not for us.

00:43:09We're going to maintain hand craftsmanship.

00:43:13That means we're going to go out of business.

00:43:17It's interesting to me being on the consumer side in the eighties, you know, you had your sprinkler tube, sprinkler pipe frames as, you know, sort of feather bed.

00:43:30We got rid of lugs and all that, but you still had a lot of steel frames running around.

00:43:34But the look of trickness was eventually a twin beam aluminum frame.

00:43:40And it was, welds were the trick part.

00:43:43Like you were, you love that because it's.

00:43:45Some of them were so beautiful.

00:43:47Yes.

00:43:47They were beautifully done.

00:43:49And all the steering head was all welded up.

00:43:52And then if you got really an exotic looking swing arm that had been built up out of parts, you just thought, man, this is, this is amazing.

00:44:00This is the future.

00:44:02RS 250 Aprilia racer.

00:44:04Yeah.

00:44:06Very organic, beautifully shaped mainframe and swing arm.

00:44:12And they, I, my heart melted when I saw those things.

00:44:17I just thought, this is art.

00:44:20But it's a laborious way.

00:44:23Yes.

00:44:24To make.

00:44:26Something to be sold at a price.

00:44:29Well, sold at a price, but also just to, just to make it.

00:44:32You know, we're, we're, we're, we've progressed to 3D printing.

00:44:37And you can just make the design and it's laid one little molecule at a time, essentially.

00:44:46And you can just get a very complicated part with relative ease.

00:44:50I went to, to my then editor, David Edwards, and said, one of the Norton upstarts, you know, Norton Reborn, Mark 2, Mark 3, Mark 4.

00:45:0355.

00:45:04Yeah.

00:45:04Um, is having a big intro.

00:45:08Um, and I'd like to go to it because they're going to show this engine that's supposedly designed by X Formula One people.

00:45:18Why are they X?

00:45:19Were they fired?

00:45:20Were they incompetent?

00:45:22Um, so I'm installed on an airliner.

00:45:26I go over and I see it.

00:45:27And the part that I didn't realize was important was this motorcycle had a cast frame.

00:45:35Now, no one would dare to cast an aluminum frame prior to the new casting methods that came into use around the year 2000.

00:45:50They found that the defects regarded as inherent to aluminum castings were not inherent at all.

00:46:02They consisted of the layers of aluminum oxide that form on hot aluminum exposed to the air being incorporated in the casting.

00:46:12Break on dotted line.

00:46:16Failure guaranteed.

00:46:18So what did they do for all those years?

00:46:21Let's call it the frosting in a cake, right?

00:46:23That's what it is.

00:46:24It's the frosting in a cake.

00:46:25The cake is homogeneous.

00:46:26And what you'd like to do is cast a piece of cake that's, you know, for your wedding and it's 18 inches tall.

00:46:34But you can't do that.

00:46:35You can't bake it.

00:46:36They figured out how to bake, you know, theoretically here.

00:46:39But bake the metal without putting, accidentally putting in entrainments, as Kevin's talking about.

00:46:46The entrainment of these oxide films.

00:46:49And in many cases, the new molding method was to fill from the bottom and to fill gradually so that it would push the films that were not desired on top of the metal and then push them out, the sprues at the top.

00:47:07Heated molds.

00:47:09Yes.

00:47:10All these things.

00:47:11All these details.

00:47:12This is what our society is based upon.

00:47:15All these details.

00:47:17So, in this way, they were able, they were, this new method of casting made a cast frame possible.

00:47:28And I first saw it.

00:47:29Yeah.

00:47:30Kevin was talking about the Norton nemesis.

00:47:32I'm virtually certain.

00:47:34Yes, that's correct.

00:47:35And I went over to see, I went over to see that crazy guy that was pushing the project.

00:47:42Yes, Melling.

00:47:42And I asked him a couple of questions about a V10, Formula One engine.

00:47:49And when, let's say the answers were unsatisfying, I concluded that he wasn't the source that I might have imagined him to be.

00:48:05But he was quite a jolly character.

00:48:08Anyway.

00:48:09Anyway.

00:48:101,500 cc V8, purportedly 260 horsepower.

00:48:14And then there is a, that prototype still exists.

00:48:19And there's also a four.

00:48:21Oh.

00:48:21There's a four also.

00:48:24With two, three spark plugs per cylinder.

00:48:26Oh, well.

00:48:28Which sounds like bad combustion to me.

00:48:31It does.

00:48:32Yes, yeah.

00:48:33But there it was because this, these new casting methods originated in England at one of the universities.

00:48:42And it's not bad to have a few universities about you.

00:48:47We may need this clever ideas that come from such places.

00:48:52Anyway, the cast frame is now a standard in the industry.

00:48:59It saves weight.

00:49:01It saves labor.

00:49:02It saves money.

00:49:04It enables, just as the Super Cub of 1958 enabled more people to have transportation.

00:49:14So, uh, price control on modern motorcycles makes them available to more people who want them.

00:49:24So, I think it's marvelous that a model, a concept which worked in 1958 continues to work.

00:49:33And it has not become a 400 pound complexity.

00:49:38It's still simple to use.

00:49:41And, uh, this, I'm, I'm pleased with this because something that works continue to work.

00:49:51What sold it was the fact that it did the job.

00:49:55Not that it had the latest gadgets on it, but that it provided reliable transportation that almost anyone could use.

00:50:03And, of course, it made Honda into a worldwide, uh, corporation because the, um, Super Cub has been produced in many nations.

00:50:18Wonderful.

00:50:19And it was a blueprint for, well, let's say it, it set fire to the American motorcycle market because it exposed so many people to the pure fundamental joy of moving on two wheels.

00:50:32It's affordable, it was cute, it's approachable, easy to ride.

00:50:36And once a 50 wasn't enough, there were many other options.

00:50:39And Honda was there, Honda was there to, uh, build that stepping stone.

00:50:44You know, Peter Egan talks about like, well, he had, there was the 50, but then he had a CB 160, a 400, a 450, 500 or 550.

00:50:53And he just goes up the chain of all the Hondas that he owned over the years, starting with, you know, a 50.

00:50:59And it was the big leap.

00:51:01Yeah.

00:51:02It was a, it was a blueprint as they expanded to the trail 90.

00:51:06S 90 was, you know, a similar type of lay down engine trail.

00:51:11And I love a lovely little motorcycle.

00:51:13S 90 was.

00:51:14Yeah.

00:51:15Trail 90 was remarkable.

00:51:16I bought one, I bought a 69.

00:51:18It still had the leading link, uh, front end friend of mine, Bill.

00:51:23I don't remember what year his was.

00:51:25I think it was overhead cam, but we rode, uh, we rode those probably 10 years ago.

00:51:32Now 15, we did about 110 mile off road loop on our trail nineties.

00:51:38Yeah.

00:51:39Yeah.

00:51:40And barely, barely used any fuel doing it, you know, Peter Egan, Peter Egan bought a used,

00:51:48he bought it in 1977, a Honda cub, super cub and pitched a story to cycle world where he

00:51:59was going to ride the Honda 50 and his friend, John Occhi was going to ride his, you know, fancy

00:52:04Italian racing motorcycle or racing bicycle, just literal 10 speed.

00:52:09And they were going to ride to Pike's peak in Iowa or wherever the heck it was.

00:52:13But, um, and they were going to see, which is more economical.

00:52:17And Peter Egan on that 50 went 303 miles and used the math worked out to 168 miles per gallon.

00:52:27Um, I think John Occhi's comment was like, you can't, you can't make a motorcycle gas tank

00:52:35leak that slowly.

00:52:39It was, it's incredible.

00:52:41And it's the blueprint continues.

00:52:43You know, we have the one 25s now the trail one 25 and, and, uh, Honda Groms navvies, you

00:52:51know, thinking about fun, transportation, approachability, size, economy.

00:52:56They just run and run.

00:52:58They're just quiet as can be.

00:53:00And you still shift the trail one 25, the same, same way you did a Honda super cub.

00:53:06And they're great.

00:53:07Yeah.

00:53:07I think my, I think my, uh, son who's now 12 over the years has probably put a few hundred

00:53:15miles on trail one 25s, just going up and down the street.

00:53:18Um, well, uh, of course, a number of the people who were engineers on the, uh, super cub went

00:53:32on to other, uh, things just, just as Mr. Harada went on to CB 450 and CB, uh, seven 50.

00:53:41Um, I'm particularly interested in the leap from four 50 to seven 50, because that was

00:53:46another, uh, gamble.

00:53:51Would, uh, the American market accept a large displacement motorcycle sales of the four 50

00:54:00were not forest fire proportions.

00:54:06People weren't sure quite what it was.

00:54:10I saw a few of them, but not many, but CB seven 50 was a barge stormer.

00:54:17It, uh, it was highly successful.

00:54:20And all of these designs were pretty workaday.

00:54:26So Mr. Harada, um, and ably assisted by Mr. Hoshino, the engine guy, were applying what

00:54:36was being learned all the while at Honda's research Institute.

00:54:43And it, like the production system was equipped with the latest goodies.

00:54:50Uh, they established a, an emissions research group early on with 10 people in it.

00:55:02And they looked at all aspects of combustion just as they had done in trying to develop,

00:55:09uh, the super cub.

00:55:12Well, CBCC certainly came out of that.

00:55:14It sure did.

00:55:15And they were able to go along without using cats a lot longer than, uh, other manufacturers.

00:55:24Well, uh, the thing that was so remarkable about it was that when it went on the market,

00:55:28it met the standards and it was not coming from the wellspring of automotive innovation, Detroit.

00:55:39It was not coming from Germany or Italy, came from Japan.

00:55:45And that is because they studied the matter early and they realized that there were ways

00:55:54that they could complete combustion, uh, make, make combustion far more complete in the combustion

00:56:04chamber by using certain techniques, um, later on.

00:56:09Rather than burning it in the tailpipe.

00:56:13Rather, yes, having to carry out the trash and burn it separately.

00:56:19So, and of course, um, when they put catalytic mufflers on the final two strokes in the mid 80s,

00:56:29one of the complaints was that, oh yeah, the RZ was notorious, the heat from the combustion

00:56:37that was taking place in, because it's 30% of the fuel being burned was being burned in the muffler.

00:56:45So, uh, they just stole a march on the others because of this.

00:56:52And by the others, I don't mean Japanese competition.

00:56:55I mean Detroit and a CVCC V8 was supposedly constructed for evaluation.

00:57:04And the American side, we'd better do this ourselves our own way here.

00:57:13You know, we, we, this is a solution, but we don't know how, how to get to it.

00:57:19So, uh, Mr. Honda, failing to make acceptable piston rings, realized he had to get real physical

00:57:32insight, actual information.

00:57:35He went to a metallurgist.

00:57:38The metallurgist showed him how to correct his mistakes that never left him.

00:57:43Well, that's an interesting, I mean, when you said that initially, I mean, I heard it

00:57:48before, but when you said initially, you know, Mr. Honda was originally getting into piston

00:57:53rings, you think, well, that's actually a pretty good place to start because so many

00:57:59details matter so much.

00:58:01Sure do.

00:58:02It's not, you know, this is not like rough casting a frame or stamps, you know, sheet metal

00:58:08stamp frames or something.

00:58:09This is big action in a little zone.

00:58:13So it's, it's good.

00:58:15I'm like, look what he got out of it.

00:58:19Look what he made out of it, let's say.

00:58:21Progressive attitude.

00:58:22He got out of it.

00:58:24Progressive attitude and, um, the cub, you know, it continues to pay the bills and it pays

00:58:32dividends to people bringing that ability for transportation and joy.

00:58:38So, um, affordability, ease of use, and we see it in all the, all the mini, uh, the mini

00:58:45lineup from Honda to this day.

00:58:48Um, Mr.

00:58:49Honda, um, actually came to this understanding that he would need to spend money on research,

00:58:57uh, a long time before, um, a presidential advisor that, uh,

00:59:08used to appear from time to time at the place where I was working in, in Newton, Massachusetts.

00:59:15Um, Gerald Zacharias.

00:59:20Zacharias said at one point, because we were in the education, um, business, he said, education

00:59:27is an industry like any other, and it should be spending three to 5% on R&D.

00:59:38And Mr.

00:59:40Honda realized that you can't just design something and then mindlessly crank it out.

00:59:45You have to have a research arm who's figuring out what to do next and how to do it.

00:59:54And also is filled with people who know about the latest technologies and they can

00:59:59tug at your sleeve and say, oh, please, Mr. Leader, will you read this report?

01:00:06You may find it interesting.

01:00:09And once again, Mr.

01:00:12Fujisawa and the engineers, um, were able to prevail against Mr.

01:00:18Honda's boneheaded insistence that he could engineer around the problem of making an air

01:00:25cooled automobile.

01:00:26The 1300 CC air cooled was running into so much trouble that a busload of engineers went

01:00:35to see the old man and they said, we don't want to lose our jobs, but you're destroying

01:00:42the company with this madness.

01:00:44You must not produce this air cooled idea.

01:00:48And Mr.

01:00:49Honda must have had his arm twisted to a satisfactory degree because what was put in the place of

01:00:58the 1300 air cooled?

01:01:02The CVC engine, CVCC engine in, in the, uh, in the new model.

01:01:12And it showed the way.

01:01:14And then came a cord in 1975 or 76, which was a small economical automobile with many options

01:01:28as standard so that it was an economical, but luxurious automobile who had that idea.

01:01:37Nice.

01:01:38Because really, really was because a Volkswagen was not luxurious.

01:01:44I've done a few miles in those things in the winter.

01:01:48The one I was riding in, the heater worked like gangbusters for the passenger, but it blew

01:01:54cold air on me who was driving.

01:01:58So succession of new concepts like this causes me to remember, uh, Bell Labs, which employed

01:02:07something like 25,000 people at one time and the instructions to them were, if you see some

01:02:15concept or technology or some possibility, explore it, we'll back you.

01:02:24And a lot of the innovation that led to the transistor revolution came from Bell Labs, but eventually

01:02:32it was decided by wiser men that it should be de-emphasized and it was, so this is a valuable idea that

01:02:45in parallel with the production side, with the design side, that there should be a research

01:02:52side that is looking into the future and imagining what the possibilities may be.

01:03:02And Honda has always pursued that, uh, line of, um, operation.

01:03:09Well, they laid the foundation with this technology from their racing operation and they got their

01:03:169,500 RPM and they looked at it from the perspective of how do we make a product to satisfy mass demand

01:03:26for getting around?

01:03:27And it succeeded so successfully that they had to, uh, they no doubt learned so much about

01:03:40manufacturing by selling 600 of those in the first day at the Tokyo dealership and selling

01:03:47so many around the world where you have to kick it up and you just have to figure out how to build

01:03:52more, you know, Harley's problem in the nineties, really the only problem, well, not the only problem,

01:03:57the main problem that Harley was trying to solve in, you know, 1995 and, and over the next several

01:04:03years was volume.

01:04:06How do we make more?

01:04:07How do we build enough?

01:04:08Yeah.

01:04:08How do we build enough?

01:04:09They were, they were always in short supply.

01:04:14They had put their shoulders to the, to the R and D wheel more in, in marketing concept because

01:04:21by selling, uh, motorcycles that were factory customs, they hit it exactly right with their

01:04:31clientele.

01:04:32And that was the replacement for Sportster in a sense was, uh, to understand that in addition

01:04:40to the touring side, there has to be a place for, uh, younger and even many older men in self

01:04:53expression through a motorcycle.

01:04:57And it was tremendously successful.

01:05:00So, uh, today we know that, uh, Ducati are famous for their success in MotoGP and, and

01:05:10in the marvelous high performance motorcycles that they produce, but their bread and butter

01:05:16is something, uh, closer to a normal vehicle, less extreme, more affordable.

01:05:30And Super Cub has been that very thing for Honda for so many years.

01:05:38It has been their heritage income that never stops and has enabled in a way, uh, that the

01:05:49research arm, which is now HRC can do the things that it does at the present moment.

01:05:56So, uh, Japanese motorcycles in MotoGP are at a low level, Honda filled the bottom four, Yamaha

01:06:06filled the bottom four places in Austria just now, last, next to last, et cetera.

01:06:13Like that was their home.

01:06:17This is unacceptable.

01:06:19But the fact is that MotoGP has become a European series now and, uh, Japan is, of course, looking

01:06:30at Southeast Asia as their next, uh, gold mine and it's hard to know what, uh, what's next,

01:06:42what direction is correct, but for sure, Super Cub was the correct direction.

01:06:50It was, what a great bet, what a remarkable bet and, um, world changing process, world changing

01:06:56motorcycle for, for Honda, certainly, which expanded its influence.

01:07:01And then it put, well, a hundred, a hundred million people on the road with a smile on their

01:07:07face or more.

01:07:09Oh, more.

01:07:10Yes.

01:07:11Yeah.

01:07:11Well, thanks for listening to everybody.

01:07:13That's, uh, that's it for this week.

01:07:16We appreciate you listening.

01:07:19You can, uh, we'll say it like comment and subscribe.

01:07:22Uh, we love seeing the comments.

01:07:24We will put something together.

01:07:26I will, uh, comb the recent comments and we will maybe do a little either Q and a, or

01:07:31we'll just, we'll do a section of the next podcast on, uh, a discussion of what's happening

01:07:36in the audience and things they, things they want to know.

01:07:38We've had questions emailed in and also, um, you know, all over YouTube and stuff.

01:07:43So we appreciate you listening and we'll catch you next time.

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