In 1938 while Mr. Honda as studying in school, he decided to invest all his earnings in a workshop. Over there, he started to work on the idea of a piston ring he planned to sell one day to the Toyota Corporation. He burned the midnight oil, worked arduously and finally produced the piston rings he desired. When he presented those to Toyota, they told him the rings did not meet the company’s quality criteria.
Had Mr. Honda opted for instant gratification, he would have instantly backed down and would have pursued something else. However, he had different plans for himself and he secede to stick to the decision he took in the first place. He kept working on those piston rings and presented them to Toyota again after two years. This time, he received his dream contact. However, when he thought things has started becoming bright for him, the Japanese government suffered from a war threat and began gearing up for it. The government did not oblige his request for the cement supplies he required to build his factory to manufacture the piston rings. Mr. Honda could have quit then too but he did not, he preserved.
He then planned to build his factory using his own concrete that he crated with his team. However, he face another setback when major parts of his manufacturing facility became casualties of war. Instead of dampening his sprit that setback presented him with another opportunity, he rallied all his team member and picked up gasoline cans thrown by the US fighters. He used those cans to gather all the raw materials he needed to manufacture the piston rings.
Mr. Honda survive this setback too, but fate had something else in store for him. An earthquake hit the city and leveled his entire factory. At that point, Mr. Honda sold the piston manufacturing facility to Toyota. Once the war was over, a huge gasoline shortage hit Japan and Mr. Honda could not even get food to feed his family.
In desperate times, created a bicycle to which he attached a tiny motor. He crated several other motorized bikes that he stated to sell and ultimately built a plant to manufacture them. He did not have enough capital to produce those bikes so he decided to get help from other bike manufactures in the country.
