Driving Honda: Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
By Jeffrey Rothfeder. Published by Penguin. Price £25
“Engineer CEOs are not, generally, inspiring or motivating public speakers.” So proclaims Jeffrey Rothfeder, author of Driving Honda, an insider’s account of life at the Japanese carmaker. This has not stopped the company from plucking every boss in its history from the ranks of the engineers: indeed, Soichiro Honda was among Japan’s best engineers when he founded the company in 1949.
Whether or not you agree about their powers as motivational speakers, engineers are viewed as essential to innovation at Honda. Soichiro Honda’s legacy, as Rothfeder ably describes, has been an unconventional company where intense creativity rubs shoulders with entrepreneurialism, and a nimbleness that allows Honda to outsmart larger competitors.
Innovation runs deep within the company, from the four-door Civic that was the first car in the world to meet the standards of the US Clean Air Act in 1974, to the introduction of the first fuel-cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity, in 2002. Underpinned by the Honda Way, which emphasises challenging received wisdom, reducing waste and perpetual change, the company’s production and engineering systems produce vehicles that are consistently rated as among the most durable in the world, notes Rothfeder.
In 1989, two years before his death, Honda became only the third non-American and the first Japanese to be enshrined in the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan.
Although Rothfeder’s book sometimes reads as if he is a proselytiser for Honda, his clear, well-researched history makes for an entertaining lesson on how a relatively modest Japanese motorcycle company took on the giants of the US automotive industry in their own backyard – and succeeded.
Soichiro Honda, an eccentric engineer who valued creativity and individualism above dull, corporate decision-making, built a company that has proved as durable as its vehicles, never having posted a loss in its history.
Donald Campbell: Bluebird and the Final Record Attempt
By Neil Sheppard. Published by History Press. Price £20
On 4 January 1967 Donald Malcolm Campbell was piloting his jet boat, Bluebird K7, across Coniston Water in pursuit of his eighth world water-speed record, when the vessel took off and somersaulted, before finally hitting the surface of the lake. TV cameras captured the moment, making it all the more poignant.
How Campbell got to that moment, why it happened, and the aftermath of the tragic event are all covered in depth in a revised edition of Neil Sheppard’s book. It provides a glimpse of Campbell the man and his need for speed. It is nicely illustrated, too. The book has ample engineering-related content, with a chapter on the fundamentals of hydroplanes, including moments and centre of gravity, lift and drag, planing surfaces, buoyancy and stability. There’s also a forensic assessment of the design and development of the K7.
Sheppard’s work portrays a remarkable man and his personal obsession that led to tragedy.
Donald Campbell: Bluebird and the Final Record Attempt
By Neil Sheppard. Published by History Press. Price £20
On 4 January 1967 Donald Malcolm Campbell was piloting his jet boat, Bluebird K7, across Coniston Water in pursuit of his eighth world water-speed record, when the vessel took off and somersaulted, before finally hitting the surface of the lake. TV cameras captured the moment, making it all the more poignant.
How Campbell got to that moment, why it happened, and the aftermath of the tragic event are all covered in depth in a revised edition of Neil Sheppard’s book. It provides a glimpse of Campbell the man and his need for speed. It is nicely illustrated, too. The book has ample engineering-related content, with a chapter on the fundamentals of hydroplanes, including moments and centre of gravity, lift and drag, planing surfaces, buoyancy and stability. There’s also a forensic assessment of the design and development of the K7.
Sheppard’s work portrays a remarkable man and his personal obsession that led to tragedy.