This tiny Honda S360 is founder Soichiro's middle finger to Japan’s MITI

• Japan’s MITI once tried to stop Honda from making cars
• Honda was only allowed to make motorcycles
• Red colour was banned for passenger cars, until Honda fought it

On October in 1962, Honda’s first car – a red Honda S360 was exhibited at the 9th Tokyo Motor Show.

For founder Soichiro Honda, the red S360 represented his open defiance against the Japanese government, which had tried to stop Honda, then just a motorcycle manufacturer, from entering the car industry.

Not only that, the colour red was at that time was only allowed for fire trucks, thus making the red sports car Honda’s double middle finger to the Japanese government.

The government’s meddling of the car industry and blanket ban on red coloured cars infuriated the rebellious engineering genius Soichiro Honda, and old man Honda was never a pacifist.

Soichiro is a revered man today but his quirky character would not have survive today’s cancel culture. Sake was his favourite beverage and his temper was legendary.

In his younger days, he used to terrorize the streets of his village in Hamamatsu on his motorcycle. He was basically a mat rempit, except that he is also a mechanical engineering genius with an intense zeal to build the best machine.

Wait…Japan was upset because a Japanese man wanted to build cars?

Before we go further, it is important to understand some background.

In the ‘60s, Japan’s automotive industry was growing rapidly but the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was concerned that if there were too many domestic car manufacturers, no manufacturer could reach sufficient scale to be competitive enough for exports.

The ministry proposed the Specified Industry Promotion Bill on May 1961, Japan. The goal is to foster mergers between smaller manufacturers, and to have only Toyota and Nissan producing large cars for export to USA.

The proposed Bill aims to structure domestic manufacturers into three groups, each with only two to three manufacturers.

1. Mass-produced cars group

2. Sports car and luxury cars group

3. Minicars group

The plan only includes existing car manufacturers. Motorcycle manufacturers like Honda were barred from entering the business.

The proposal sent Soichiro Honda into rage, and tales of him harassing MITI officials were legendary.

In the book ‘The Honda Myth,’ author Masaaki Sato said Soichiro Honda had once pretended to be drunk (the quirky genius had quite a reputation for drinking anyway, so few would doubt it) and stumbled into MITI’s office with a bottle of sake in his hand saying, “The Ministry? The Ministry of what? You’re a bunch of morons! You’re the reason the Japanese industry is so damn weak!”

In another incident, he snapped at a MITI officer by saying “Government employees are supposed to dedicate themselves to the public good, but every time we try something new, all we get are complaints and rejections! If you’ve got a problem about Honda’s policies, why don’t you become a shareholder first? Buy some stocks and then I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

In his article published in the October 1952 issue of Honda’s internal bulletin, Honda Monthly, Honda-san famously told his employees “If you cannot be Number One in the world, you cannot be Number One in Japan,” turning conventional understanding upside down.

“I simply cannot go along with the idea that in order to protect our jobs, we should set limits on the import of foreign cars. Technological competition should be conducted by technological means. No matter what barriers we put in their way, quality products will always find a way in… Good products know no national boundaries… ‘The best in Japan’ means nothing when you are only comparing yourself with the rest of Japan… the moment a better foreign product is imported, that kind of ‘Number One in Japan’ is toppled. Being ‘Number One in Japan’ is but a stage on the way to being ‘Number One in the world.’”

Soichiro Honda also believed that Honda motorcycles were conquering the world because the government hadn’t meddled with the motorcycle business.

To get a sense of how animated and carefree Soichiro Honda is (in today's parlance, some will call him #NoFilter), here's a video of Honda-san at Honda's 35th anniversary in 1983, one of his last public apperance before passing away in 1991.

In his speech, he apologised to Honda staff for having to put up with his constant yelling, and admited that Honda was quite an unruly company, but also cheekily added, "Looking at what everyone has achieved, it makes me think that maybe all the yelling was worth it."

In his later years, after his retirement, Soichiro Honda recalled his confrontation with Shigeru Sahashi, then the undersecretary at MITI, in a 1983 television interview, in his typically charismatic self:

"I deluged him with complaints," he said, "because I couldn’t understand it at all. To hell with the Specified Industry Promotion Law! I had the right to manufacture automobiles, and they couldn’t enforce a law that would allow only the existing manufacturers to build them while preventing us from doing the same. We were free to do exactly what we wanted. Besides, no one could say for certain that those in power would remain there forever. Look at history," Mr. Honda continued.

"Eventually, a new power would always arise. I shouted at him angrily, saying that if MITI wanted us to merge (form a joint venture with another company), then they should buy our shares and propose it at our shareholders" meeting. After all, we were a public company. The government couldn’t tell me what to do."

The rush to produce Honda’s first car

The door to enter the automotive industry was closing fast so Honda had to rush and bring forward its plans to manufacture its first car, just so it could to qualify itself as a car manufacturer before the Specified Industry Promotion Bill was passed.

Several years earlier, a car development team had already been formed in 1958, known as the Third Research Section. Seven young engineers made up the car development team. They came from a variety of backgrounds, including motorcycles, three-wheelers, and even airplanes, but none had any experience with automotive engineering.

The team would later grew to 15, working on two four-wheeler prototypes concurrently – a T360 minitruck and a S360 sports car.

Motorcycle technology was their starting point and it shows. Instead of a propeller shaft, power from the S360’s 356cc liquid cooled four cylinder engine was sent to the rear-wheels via motorcycle-style chain drives, sealed within the independent rear suspension on each side of the rear axle. The engine revved like a motorcycle engine, producing 33 PS at 8,500 rpm.

“How can they ban red colour?”

The original scale model prepared Masao Kawamura, who was responsible for the S360’s exterior design, was painted in orange.

When Kawamura presented the model to his boss, Soichiro Honda didn’t like the orange colour and said, “The new car is definitely going to be red, but we should use a more vivid red."

At that time, Japan had a law that banned passenger cars from being painted in either red or white colours, to avoid confusion between ambulances and fire trucks.

Clearly Honda-san knew that it is illegal to produce a car in red, but he wanted to do it anyway.

As if going against the government’s orders to produce cars wasn’t enough, Soichiro wanted to show his defiance against the government by painting his first car in a fiery, illegal colour.

He even wrote a coloumn on Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper saying, “Red is the basic colour of design. How can they ban it by law? I’m aware of no other industrial nation in the world in which the state monopolizes the use of colors.”

The task of convincing the Japan’s Ministry of Transport to grant a special exemption for Honda to use the red colour fell to Mitsugi Akita, then manager of the Development Management Section at Honda R&D.

The Japanese government, already not on good terms with Honda, told Akita, “I know Honda, but I’ve never heard of Honda R&D,” and sent him away.

Days went by without any results,” recalled Akita to Honda’s archives.

Akita’s perseverance paid off. An exemption was granted to Honda, and soon many other car makers started painting their cars red as well.

"It was only Honda who fought for the right to paint car bodies red," recalled Akita, "Soon, though, the other manufacturers started using it even on their commercial vehicles."

"We relied on our youth and stamina to overcome impossible odds," designer Kawamura said.

At the 11th National Honda Meeting General Assembly was held on June 5, 1962, at the soon-to-be-completed Suzuka Circuit, Sochiro Honda drove a bright red S360 in front of assembled Honda employees. Honda’s first car is now a reality.

Four months later at the 9th Tokyo Motor Show on October 25, 1962, held at the International Trade Center at Tokyo’s Harumi Wharf, the S360 made its first public appearance.

Also on display was a S500, which had a slightly larger body, powered by a more powerful 531cc, 44 PS (at 8,000 rpm) in-line four-cylinder DOHC engine with a top speed of 130 km/h.

The T360 rounded the trio of Honda four-wheelers. Although the S360 was Honda’s first car, it didn’t make it into production, so it is extremely rare and the few surviving ones are kept at Honda’s Collection Hall in Tochigi, near the company’s R&D facility.

In August 1963, the T360 became the first production Honda car, followed shortly by the S500 in October that year.

The two-pronged approach was intended to qualify Honda as a producer of both commercial use ‘kei’ minivehicles (T360) and passenger cars (S500), thereby securing Honda’s future in the automobile industry.

The controversial Specified Industry Promotion Bill came and went, it did not made it to the Diet (as the Japanese Parliament is known) and was soon forgotten.

The spirit of the Honda S360 / S500 was succeeded by the Honda Beat, and later the Honda S660, which has since been discontinued.

Also read: The Honda S660 was once nearly launched in Malaysia, so what killed it?

Today’s automotive industry is a very different place from the one that Soichiro Honda pioneered.

One wonders what he will say about the Honda E, and the state of today’s Honda’s ‘Challenging Spirit.’

Also read: Production of Honda S660 ending in 2022, but not before this final send-off

Also read: Want to stand out? Honda E now in Malaysia, priced from RM 210k