Honda Marks 78 Years Since the 'Bata Bata' Bike

Good News Network marks 78 years since Soichiro Honda turned bombed-out scraps into a company whose Super Cub outsold every car icon combined.

According to Good News Network, Honda Motor Company was founded 78 years ago today, on September 24, 1948, and its road to worldwide success began in the most humble way imaginable. After American bombers destroyed Soichiro Honda's piston-ring factory during the war, he sold the salvageable remains to Toyota and started over, building two-stroke motorized bicycles out of a shack with a 12-man team. The rickety bikes were nicknamed the "bata bata" after the sound they made, and the money they earned funded the founding of the company itself. Honda's first professional machine, the 1949 D-Type, later won world championships in the 125cc and 250cc classes after a foray into motorsport.

The story's most delightful detail, as Good News Network reports it, is the design brief for the Honda Super Cub: Honda's development partner Fujisawa insisted it be rideable with one hand while carrying a tray of soba noodles, betting that every noodle shop in Japan would want one for deliveries. Entering continuous production in 1958, the 50cc scooter became a global phenomenon, selling more units than all versions of the Mini Cooper, all VW Beetles, and all Toyota Corollas ever sold, combined. Good News Network notes Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle and scooter manufacturer since 1959, reaching 400 million units produced by the end of 2019 — enough to give a moped to every person in six Asian countries with millions left over.

Good News Network's roundup of this day in history stacks several more smiles. Seventy-two years ago, the AEC Routemaster 8 entered service, becoming the iconic red London double-decker; despite an open boarding platform and a deck inaccessible to wheelchairs, it was voted one of Britain's top 10 design icons in 2006 alongside Concorde and the Mini, and appeared on a Royal Mail stamp in 2009. Fifty-one years ago, Chris Bonington's British team became the first to summit Everest via the treacherous southwest face, with Dougal Haston and Doug Scott arriving first after Nick Estcourt and Tut Braithwaite scaled the Rock Band at about 27,000 feet. Good News Network also flags F.

The through-line of these anniversaries, as Good News Network frames it, is that technology and design succeed when they help ordinary people — Honda's founding principle was that "the purpose of technology is to help people," motorizing four generations of working-class riders across Asia, Europe, and North America. Even the flawed Routemaster proved that charm can outlast obvious shortcomings, outliving several of its replacements and surviving privatization. Good News Network closes with Sir Chris Bonington's reflection on tackling the impossible: "It's the fascination of seeing and looking at what seems like a huge problem, and almost impossible problem, and then using your experience, your vision, to actually work out a route on it and then go and actually do it." Meanwhile, WBKO's "Good News: Cycling history across Kansas" segment shows local outlets keeping the two-wheeled feel-good spirit alive on the same day.