The original Honda Super Cub C100, in the Japanese “sea and sky” livery. Photo courtesy Honda.
“You meet the nicest people on a Honda.”
The year was 1963 and American Honda, which opened its doors in Los Angeles barely four years prior with eight employees, wanted to change the way car-loving Americans saw motorcycles. When Honda came to the United States in 1959, fewer than 60,000 motorcycles were sold here annually, with most of those being domestic and European models larger than 500cc.
Dealers were skeptical of this bold, upstart new Japanese company, essentially telling 39-year-old General Manager Kihachiro Kawashima, “Good luck, but you?re just splitting a small pie into even smaller pieces.” Undaunted, Kawashima responded: Fine, we?ll make the pie bigger on our own. And the key to that bigger pie was the 50cc CA100, the “nifty, thrifty Honda Fifty,” known in Japan as the Super Cub.
“To succeed in the U.S. is to succeed worldwide. To take up the challenge of the American market may be the most difficult thing to do, but it’s a critical step in expanding the export of our products.” –Takeo Fujisawa, Senior Managing Director and co-founder of Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

 
Honda’s “You meet the nicest people” ad campaign has become the stuff of legend, and it almost single-handedly changed the American motorcycle industry forever. Image courtesy Honda.
The Super Cub was designed t...