The Honda Jet: The Height of Automotive Success

Rolls Royce aside (who technically only make jet engines, but were also first and foremost an automotive company), which other ground based vehicle manufacturer has ascended to the skies and extended their vehicular range to the highway hopping heights of ‘Big Red’s’ ‘HondaJet’?

Is such an aspiration shared among other automotive manufacturers and which if any is likely to join Honda in transitioning from tarmac and terrafirma to take-offs and turbulence?

More to the point, which automotive brand would you like to see on airport runways and serving those who can afford to include in their travel plans the words “private jet”?

Let’s take a brief look at Honda’s success on the ground, it’s road to the HondaJet and what makes the plane so celebrated by those in the know, before considering which other industry players might be next to join Honda a mile high.

Unlike Rolls Royce, Honda is more the everyman’s vehicle and while R.R. represents the lap of luxury, Honda maintains much more of a mid-market position – it’s hardly a fair comparison.

And it’s exactly this that makes Honda’s break from the status quo (at least on the surface) even more surprising – almost akin to returning from your holidays to your suburban home to find your otherwise unremarkable neighbour has installed a helipad on their roof.

With reliability and consistency dictating the road to success for such an entity as Honda, it begs the question: how an earth did they get the accounting department to sign off on construction of a jet plane?

A quick look at recent Honda’s sales figures reveals little to hint at a windfall of collateral and exceptional ‘champagne celebration’ type numbers.

If not from all conquering sales figures, perhaps motorsport dominance pitched Honda big wigs in the direction of higher speeds and a focus on lift as opposed to traction and downforce? Again, no. 

Despite Honda’s continued presence in Formula 1, it seems clear that Mercedes dominates the constructors championship.

If not propelled by explosive profits nor racetrack glory, we must look to Honda’s seemingly sane senior management of the last handful of decades to decipher the as-yet unclear thinking behind what has shown to be in hindsight; a well calculated ascent to the world of private air travel. 

It turns out these things don’t happen overnight and we need go back to 1986 to see Honda’s first foray into research leading to today’s aeronautical prowess. This was also the year that Honda took its first steps towards the Asimo walking robot.

President of Honda during this period was Tadashi Kume who gave up the reins in 1990 but began as company head three years prior to the birth of what has come to be the HondaJet. Tadashi’s foresight and grasp of the impending inevitabilities faced by car manufacturers was an antidote to the sometimes headstrong, even stubborn nature of the company’s founder.

If Mr. Kume’s grounded realisation that Honda must pursue water cooled engines for its road going vehicles and his help in bringing into being legacy models such as the Honda Civic brought him credibility and respect, perhaps he could be afforded a flight of fancy such as a deep-seated ambition to one day ‘fly Honda’.

What we can be sure of is the economic climate in Japan at the time. Japan’s ‘economic miracle’ and ascendant growth trajectory was close to its peak and Honda’s own successes were much in line with those of the country at large. 

The company was only 38 years old, but by way of its founder had gotten off to a flying start, maintaining buoyant sales for the duration and despite a recent change in leadership and something of a new era following the still-recent and “manly retirement” of Soichiro Honda, the financial resources were matched by proven competency and a knack for forward planning.

The folks at Honda could afford to dream a little and more than just having a plan, over the coming decades they put this plan into into action, leaving all other car manufacturers behind on the tarmac.

Much like an average family vehicle, a HondaJet holds room for a maximum of four passengers, although of course the cockpit encourages the addition of two pilots which brings the total capacity to six. Considered a ‘luxury light jet’ the plane is billed as flying ‘farthest and highest in its class’.

If there’s any lesson in this it’s that exceptionalism doesn’t happen overnight and in the case of the HondaJet, it’s been over 35 years in the making. Aside from the hand of time, a little intellectual muscle doesn’t hurt and it was namely Mississippi State University that helped with the key formative technological research: that of composite materials. 

In addition to the eggheads at MSU, it wasn’t without the industrial might of General Electric that assisted Honda in developing what would help propel the plane to it’s upper ceiling of 43,000 ft and a max speed of almost 500 MPH: the GE Honda HF120. 

It seems in terms of success in the automotive world and be that under one brand: the sky’s the limit. If Honda can do it, who might be next to follow suit?