Features
H is for Honda
The Japanese firm was going green half-a-century ago, says Jason Barlow, which is why it remains at the forefront with the new SHS
The world's energy supply is terrifyingly fragile. But if you think things are bad in 2007, come with me back to the early 1970s. We were talking apocalypse then.
It's October 6, 1973 and a coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, has just launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory in the Sinai peninsula. As an added bonus, the assault commences on Yom Kippur, the sacred day of atonement in the Jewish calendar. Students of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict still regard the Yom Kippur war as one of the sorriest flashpoints in the whole appalling saga.
As well as the human cost, the economic repercussions were seismic. Eleven days into the conflict, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) decreed it would no longer export oil to nations that had supported Israel in its war against Egypt and Syria (America, primarily, but also many European states, though not the UK, which had criticised Israel's border incursions then pretty much stayed out of it).
Sister cartel OPEC simultaneously cut production and placed an embargo on exports, quadrupling the cost of oil. The world's geo-political axis had tilted irrevocably, with the Middle East revelling in its new-found power and the US rocked by rocketing petrol prices and soaring energy costs.
'People started dreaming about small hatches that didn't drink like Dean Martin on a Vegas bender'
The embargo only lasted six months, but the damage was done. President Nixon's regime imposed a blanket speed limit of 55mph, the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) mandate was introduced demanding 27.5mpg, and NASCAR even reduced all race distances by 10 per cent.
People stopped lusting after Dodge Chargers and started dreaming about small hatches that were reliable and didn't drink like Dean Martin on a 48-hour Vegas bender. Detroit's 'Big Three' didn't make any of those, so people in Padiddlyboing Idaho started buying Japanese cars.
Ah yes, the Japanese. On a macroeconomic level, the '73 Energy Crisis was the making of them. They got out of oil-based business and into electronics. And their car industry suddenly began to look very interesting indeed.
Honda, in particular. You could devote an entire issue of Top Gear to the brilliant lunacy of founder Soichiro Honda, but suffice to say that in the midst of piloting jet packs, building 50 million step-off motorbikes and helping cement Ayrton Senna's mythic status, Mr Honda was a green thinker before the concept had even been invented.
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