Book review: Driving Honda, by Jeffrey Rothfeder
Jeffrey Rothfeder has written eight books, including the well-received 2007 profile McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire.
by Jeffrey Rothfeder
Penguin/Portfolio
Jeffrey Rothfeder has written eight books, including the well-received 2007 profile McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire. The former editor-in-chief at International Business Times writes with the clarity of an accomplished journalist, but readers of his latest work, Driving Honda, might initially wonder whether he has been embedded too long on the company's production lines.
Rothfeder portrays Honda bosses rolling up their sleeves and engagingly highlights how the company employs quirky people who seek new ways of doing things. Yet readers might also wonder whether these attributes are unique to the marque in 2014, or if the author's every line was scanned, taken apart and reassembled by Honda's notorious quality control.
Rothfeder's analysis of Honda's post-war beginnings is the highlight of the book. His readable history captures engineer founder Soichiro Honda's get up and go in sourcing his first engines, and the motorisation of his first bikes.
The author also researches well to capture the joy of the marque's first Isle of Man TT win in 1961. And, in a faint nod to negativity in this largely rah-rah book, he also illustrates Honda's hubris-filled first experiment with cars.
Rothfeder's fluent, concise narrative makes easy reading and also reminds family businesspeople of the sense of partnering with an outsider who can temper the founders' foibles, and strengthen the company, as Takeo Fujisawa did with Soichiro Honda. Rothfeder uncovers the pair's dynamics and illustrates their mutual trust to create a convincing argument for consensus, but he over-eggs the corporate uniqueness of Honda.