This: the Japanese motor corporation

The company manufactures automobiles and motorcycles, trucks, scooters, robots, jets and jet engines, ATV, water craft, electrical generators, marine engines, lawn and garden equipment, and aeronautical and other mobile technologies. Honda's line of luxury cars are branded Acura in North America and China. More recently they have ventured into mountain bikes.

Honda is the 5th largest automobile manufacturer in the world as well as the largest engine-maker in the world, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. As of August 2008 Honda surpassed Chrysler as 4th largest automobile manufacturer in United States. Currently, Honda is the second largest manufacturer in Japan behind Toyota and ahead of Nissan.

Honda is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Their shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, as well as exchanges in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, London, Paris and Switzerland. American Honda Motor Co. is based in Torrance, California. Honda Canada Inc. is headquartered in the Scarborough district of Toronto, Ontario, and is building new corporate headquarters in Markham, Ontario, scheduled to relocate in 2008. Hero Honda, a joint venture between India's Hero Group and Honda, is the largest manufacturer of two wheelers in the world. Honda of Canada Manufacturing is based in Alliston, Ontario. Honda has also created joint ventures around the world, such as Honda Siel Cars India Ltd, Hero Honda Motorcycles India Ltd, Guangzhou Honda and Dongfeng Honda Automobile Company in China and Honda Atlas Cars Pakistan.

With high gas prices and a weak US economy in June 2008, Honda has reported a 1% sales increase while its rivals including the Detroit Big Three and Toyota have reported double-digit losses. Analysts have attributed this to two main factors. First, Honda's product lineup consists of mostly small to mid-size, highly fuel-efficient vehicles. Secondly, over the last ten years, Honda has designed its factories to be flexible, in that they can easily retooled to produce any Honda model that may be in-demand at the moment. Honda's sales were up almost 20 percent from the same month last year. The Civic and the Accord were in the top five list of sales.

Leadership

• 1948-1973 — Soichiro Honda
• 1973-1983 — Kiyoshi Kawashima
• 1983-1990 — Tadashi Kume
• 1990-1998 — Nobuhiko Kawamoto
• 1998-2004 — Hiroyuki Yoshino
• 2004-present — Takeo Fukui

Motorcycle

main: Honda Racing Corporation

Soichiro Honda, being a race driver himself, could not stay out of international motorsport. In 1959, Honda entered five motorcycles into the Isle of Man TT race, at that time the most prestigious motorcycle race in the world. While always having powerful engines, it took until 1961 for Honda to tune their chassis well enough to allow Mike Hailwood to claim their first Grand Prix victories in the 125 and 250 cc classes. Hailwood would later pick up their first senior TT wins in 1966 and 1967. Honda's race bikes were known for their "sleek & stylish design" and exotic engine configurations, such as the 5-cylinder, 22,000 rpm, 125 cc bike and their 6-cylinder 250 cc and 380 cc bikes.