How the Honda Super Cub Became the Best-Selling Vehicle in History

In December 1956, Soichiro Honda and his sales chief Takeo Fujisawa flew to Europe looking for their next big idea. They came back convinced that neither a moped nor a scooter would do. What they needed was something new entirely, built for a country where only one road in ten was paved and where the person riding to work might be wearing a business suit or a kimono. Two years later, that idea became the Honda Super Cub. Today, with production numbers that outpace nearly every car ever built, it stands as the best-selling motor vehicle in human history, and the story of how it got there starts with a design brief nobody thought was realistic.

The Trip That Started It All

The two men hadn’t set out with a specific product in mind. They spent weeks studying how people in different European countries actually used small bikes day to day, and the differences surprised them. There was no single template worth copying. Back in Japan, Honda and his development team turned that research into a short list of requirements.