History of Honda Street bikes

Honda's first bikes were very successful and supplies of the surplus engines ran out after a few months. Business was good by then, so he decided to manufacture his own motors. Using the surplus motor as a model, Honda designed and built his own 50cc engine.
Honda Motor Company is by far the world's biggest street bike maker. Honda's first street bike was born out of necessity in immediate post World War II Japan, where public transportation was desperately overcrowded and gasoline severely restricted. Soichiro Honda started Honda Motor Company in 1948, at the age of 41. Soon after he hooked up with financial whiz Takeo Fujisawa and together they built an empire. 1948 saw Honda introduce a 90cc version of the A-Type known as the "B-Type".

By 1949 Honda came out with the "D-Type". Mr. Honda was involved in every step of the two-stroke D-Type Dream's design and manufacture. This was Honda's first street bike. This was far from simply slotting a motor into a pushbike frame. Honda called his machine 'The Dream', because his dream of building a complete, street bike had come true. Soichiro Honda was an engineer and was always looking to produce better and more sophisticated machines.
Honda produced different versions of the Dream street bikes over the next few years incorporating different size engines (up to 350cc) and other refinements.

From the beginning, Mr. Honda dedicated his company to racing, racking up over 100 major street bike championships around the world. What was learned from building high-performance racing machines later led to the development of groundbreaking production street bikes.