Honda started by bolting war-surplus radio motors onto bicycles.
In bombed-out 1946 Japan, with fuel scarce and bicycles everyone’s transport, a mechanic named Soichiro Honda bought a batch of small engines built for the army’s battlefield radios and strapped them onto bicycles. He had no engineering degree, and Toyota had once rejected his piston rings, passing only three of the 50 he sent.
Honda on Brandseum