It’s been said that the victors write history. It’s also the case that history tends to be written in the native language of the country – or company. Perhaps it’s for those reasons that good histories of the major Japanese car makers seem so absent – or, when they do appear, are rather lame.

Honda Motor – the Men, the Management, the Machines was written by Tetsuo Sakiya in 1982. When I came across it, the age of the book didn’t worry me – surely all the foundations of the company were in place by then – so it was a read I was looking forward to.

However, the promise isn’t fulfilled. Basically, it’s because the author feels the necessity to wander off into prolonged diversions on Japanese history, culture, labour practices, emancipation of women, trading companies, the role of government – and God knows what else.

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Orville and Wilbur Wright were genuine engineering heroes. Despite their relatively humble beginnings, these men were the first to ever to build – and then successfully fly – a powered aircraft.

I’ve often read descriptions of their brilliance that damns them with faint praise: they were ‘just bicycle mechanics’, their work built heavily on the efforts of others, and so on.

In fact, they were simply brilliant engineers, with an astounding work ethic and the ability to both physically make things and also theorise about outcomes.

Unless you think I overstate the brothers’ abilities, consider these points… They built their own wind tunnel and tested in it almost 200 wing sections; they built an internal combustion engine with the then best power/weight ratio of any engine in the world; they made every part of their own aircraft – from that engine through to propellers to wing and control systems; they developed the concept of an aircraft banking into turns – and a lot more. 

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