Autosnewspaper.com

Honda celebrates the 50th anniversary of its arrival in the United States this week. On June 11,.1959, American Honda Motor Company, Inc. was established in . small store front at 4077 West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Kihachiro Kawashima was joined by seven employees in the former photo shop. He bought the building instead of simply renting it because he felt that Honda needed to commit itself to this new market in America.

Although the plan had been to sell motorcycles larger than 300cc, the Honda study group noticed that Americans seemed to be more interested in the Honda .100 Super Cub,.. small, step-through moped with . relatively clean, quiet,.50cc four-stroke engine. The Super Cub would become the most popular motorcycle in the world in 1959, as more than 500,000 examples poured out of the Honda factories. Kawashima'. group sold 1,700..100. in the …. that year.

In tribute, American Honda has erected a facsimile of the original storefront (now an acupuncture clinic, if the current signage is any guide) in the lobby of its headquarters in Torrance, California, and an original Honda C100 and the first U.S.-built Honda Accord are posed within. Now, of course, American Honda has more than two dozen design, manufacturing, research and testing facilities in North America.

While Honda already has an elaborate museum in Japan at Twin-Ring Motegi, American Honda has recently been gathering an informal assembly of important vehicles in its own history, including motorcycles, cars, concept cars and racing machinery.

And yet for all Honda 's expansion into products of all kinds, it remains the company of the Super Cub. The Honda 50 was a real pop culture phenomenon in the era of the hula hoop, and in fact the Honda C100 is still sold in Southeast Asia, little changed from the moped of 50 years ago. And just like the Honda 50, every Honda automobile is designed to be practical, thrifty, effortlessly intuitive to use, and, most of all, friendly.

Fifty years later, friendly is still the Honda Way.