The Iron Horse Part 3

      In 1959 the most successful foreign invasion of
American soil in history took place in Los Angeles, California, but it started with a whimper, not a bang.  What the Japanese had failed to do in World War II they would now succeed in doing thanks to Soichiro Honda.  His massive invasion force consisted of a handful of technicians and lower management personnel who shared a small apartment and storefront where they assembled their primary invasion machine, “The Honda Dream 250.”  Unfortunately American roads demanded a much more robust machine than the
“Dream”
and it was a bust. There was however another machine that was imported along with the “Dream” that was destined to change the way Americans perceived motorcycles.  That was a puny 50cc three speed step through motorcycle that could only manage 45 mph but could go over 200 miles on a single
gallon of gas, it was called “The Honda Super Cub.”
     The success of Honda in the States was not an overnight phenomenon but rather a diligent, steady assault on the unsuspecting American motorcycle market and by 1961 Honda had a 500 dealer network stretching from coast to coast.  They were now poised to launch their most insidious attack of all, an advertising campaign that was so (for lack of a better word) cute and irresistible that buyers lined up at dealership doors like lambs being lead to the dinner table.  I hate to even utter that horribly perverse slogan even if it is required in the telling of the story but here goes, “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.”
     Of course I am just playing the fool (which is an easy part for me) but it just might be possible that the management of Harley Davidson, Triumph, BSA, Norton, and even BMW would probably see my description of Honda’s slogan as pretty accurate.  Armed with five-million dollars in advertising money the American Honda Motor Company went from interloper to industry leader overnight.  Who could resist the ads?  They were to the point, cute, and in the case of the young lady holding on to the young man while riding on the back of his Super Cub, a bit sexy.  Honda boomed, bringing out an expanding line of models that grew in popularity and engine size in rapid fire succession until it peaked with a bike that went head to head with the big boy models and then did them one better, it was perhaps the single best motorcycle of its time, the CB 750.
     Competing motorcycle manufacturers were caught flat footed, and realized that they had to do something to combat Honda’s assault and they had to do it fast.  So they did what companies had done for decades when confronted with a marketing dilemma they turned to sex to sell their products!  After all Honda had kind of started it with the cute couple on the Super Cub cruising through campus looking like they had just had............, well you know.  Triumph and HD tried to take the high road at first pretending that young healthy college age adults just wanted to ride their Bonnevilles and Duo-Glides out into the country where they picnicked and sang folk songs.  Norton and the Italians on the other hand took the bull by the horns so to speak.  They began showing voluptuous young females adorning their bikes in the hope of convincing potential male buyers that if you puchased one of their products you to could end up with the girl of
your dreams.

     Of course tawdry advertising like this always ends with the same result, it worked really well!  Want proof, I still have a Norton Girl poster hanging on my office wall that I tell my wife I keep purely for the historical significance of the ad campaign, to which she coquettishly replies, “in a pigs eye you old pervert.”  What can I say she calls em like she sees um!  The pity is that is that even sexy advertisements can’t help when your product begins to fall behind the competition due to lack of technological development.  Close tolerance engines with overhead cams and shim valves began to last tens of thousands of miles.  The electronic ignition did away with pesky points allowing for unheard of rpms and no need for repetitive tuneups.  The monoshock revolutionized handling, and the disc brake helped you survive the effects of the other improvements.  Unfortunately for the English and European makers nearly all of these leaps in technology were introduced by the Japanese.
     I had an uncle whose business was suffering terribly due to the Japanese taking away his clients.  He could have cried in his milk but instead he packed his bags and went to Japan for some months begging tours and interviews with ever Japanese firm he could in an effort to learn what he could do to compete.  When he came back I asked him what he  had learned and he gave me several good examples of how they were beating us but he said the most telling thing was their attitude.  He told me that if Americans and European manufacturers produced a good product that sold well the first thing they would do is to sit back and enjoy their success, but the Japanese manufacturer only saw his success as a challenge to make his product even better, thereby insuring its future success.
     Nowhere else was this more evident than in the motorcycle industry, Honda or one of the other Japanese makers would debut some game changing technology to their line and then everyone else would limp along with their old technology until five years later when it was old news.  Or as the old saying goes, a day late and a dollar short.  This failure to recognize this fact spelled the demise or near demise of some great old badges like BSA, Norton, and even Triumph.
     Next time we will look at the turning points that brought some great old companies back and how the Japanese began to loose their grip on the market due to a man named "Willie."