GREENSBORO, N.C.—Honda Motor Co. is finally getting
its wings.
After three decades of planning and development, the Japanese
company known for its cars is preparing to deliver one of its most
unusual innovations: an ultrafast business jet that carries its
engines above its wings. The seven-seat HondaJet, which lists for
around $4.5 million, is awaiting final approval by the Federal
Aviation Administration after receiving preliminary certification
in late March, putting it on pace for delivery to customers around
the middle of the year.
The HondaJet makes 67-year-old Honda an upstart member of the
exclusive club of airplane makers. For Michimasa Fujino, the
54-year-old chief executive of Honda Aircraft Co., the impending
certification is the culmination of a decadeslong fight to make a
Honda aircraft in the face of skeptical executives, technical
delays and the global recession.
During a flight in the jet from Honda Aircraft's home base in
this North Carolina city, the soft-spoken Mr. Fujino was quick to
point out the details large and small that make up the project that
has defined his adult life.
His influence touches every aspect of the design, from its
curves to the manufacturing process. "This airplane is my art
piece," he said in an interview.
The jet, which makes its European debut this week in Geneva,
adds to a nascent aerospace renaissance for Japan, which has long
supplied parts and materials to Boeing Co. and Airbus Group NV but
hasn't recently made its own civilian planes. In addition to Honda,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. is separately developing the
country's first commercial airliner in a half century. Its first
test flight is scheduled for later this year.
The jet gives Honda—which also makes robots, boat
motors, and lawn mowers—entree into a new market. But its
success is far from assured in a small-jet segment with entrenched
incumbents—Textron Inc.'s Cessna unit and Brazil's
Embraer SA—and uneven demand.
No modern car company has successfully made the transition to
building aircraft. Honda is betting that technological advances
will trigger new demand from buyers used to more incremental
upgrades from its rivals. The HondaJet boasts a lightweight body
made of carbon-fiber composites, which helps it tout as much as 17%
better fuel efficiency than competitors while having the highest
speed in its class: 420 knots, or 480 miles per hour. The
aircraft's automotive influence is evident in things such as
push-button engine starters and the company's use of a dealer
network to sell it.
Given Honda's size, it is likely to be a serious long-term
competitor, said Marco Túlio Pellegrini, head of
Embraer's executive aircraft business. "I think they have plenty of
money," he said in an interview late last year. "They are investing
heavily in promotion and marketing."
Honda's aviation aspirations date to its late founder, Soichiro
Honda, who was a pilot. Mr. Fujino's work started in 1986, when
Honda sent the then-28-year-old aerospace engineer to Mississippi
State University's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory to design an
experimental aircraft.The effort was so secret that Mr. Fujino's
business cards weren't allowed to indicate his Honda employment, he
recalls.
Mr. Fujino said he believed any project the company embarked on
would have to distinguish itself from the competition. "If other
manufacturers can do it, there's no reason why we have to do it,"
he said.
The first decade produced a pair of designs, but the
breakthrough came one night in 1996 when, unable to find a piece of
paper, he sketched the basics of the plane's current design on the
back of a wall calendar. Inspired by principles in a 1930s
aerodynamics textbook, the design mounted jet engines atop the
wings to boost cabin space and cut noise.
The idea bucked industry convention. Business jets sit too low
to fit engines below the wings, and putting them above was thought
to lead unavoidably to swirling air that drags on the aircraft. So
conventional business-jet designs attach the engines to the back of
the fuselage, away from the wings. Mr. Fujino's wing-top design
addresses the aerodynamic problem by combining the air flow over
wing and engine into a single wave, significantly reducing the
force that robs an aircraft of its speed and fuel efficiency.
Honda managers were incredulous, he said, but in late 1997, Mr.
Fujino presented the business case to the board with the sketch in
hand, receiving approval for a flying prototype. All told, it would
take three years of persuasion, using simulations and wind tunnels
to prove his point. The project was reminiscent of an earlier era
of aviation. Just as Boeing developed a jetliner demonstrator in
the 1950s to prove to airlines engines could be slung under the
wings, Mr. Fujino set about proving they could work above.
He and around 40 employees started building the prototype in
2000 in a leased airport hangar in Greensboro that provided long
runways and clear airspace for testing. The prototype flew
successfully in 2003.
Other new small-jet designs also were promising to revolutionize
personal travel. A startup called Eclipse Aviation Inc. in 1998
pledged to sell a five-seat jet for under $1 million. Eclipse filed
for bankruptcy after delivering just 260 aircraft, but it spurred
Cessna and Embraer to follow, and helped persuade Honda to start
its aircraft subsidiary in 2006. It quickly accumulated more than
100 orders for HondaJet, which it aimed to deliver by 2010.
Then came the recession, which decimated demand for small
private jets and prompted Honda to reconsider. "We had a heated
discussion of what to do with the airplane business," said
Yoshiharu Yamamoto, former head of Honda's technology laboratory,
who retired from that post at the end of March. "If we had stopped
there, we would have wasted all those technologies." Honda stuck
with the project after Mr. Fujino promised a more stringent
budget—which slowed the jet's debut.
Honda is part of a growing aerospace cluster in North Carolina.
Today, HondaJet's workforce has grown to 1,300 at its 133-acre
campus here, providing easy access to the U.S. and Europe, 80% of
its estimated market. Honda's General Electric Co. joint venture
and GKN Aerospace, a unit of GKN PLC, have both set up factories in
the region.
Mr. Fujino says transitioning to serial production is smoothed
by the fact that HondaJet has established a tight core of about 50
suppliers—including Garmin Ltd. and Sumitomo Precision
Products Co.—that he lined up during visits to dozens of
prospective vendors when the jet was still a "purely experimental
project" in 1999.
Honda hasn't disclosed its spending on the HondaJet, but the
company boasts a huge research-and-development
budget—about $5.3 billion in its fiscal 2014. By
comparison, Boeing spent $3 billion on R&D last year.
Mike Whalen, CEO of hotel-and-restaurant company Heart of
America Group DBA, ponied up a $75,000 deposit in 2007 for his
HondaJet, which he initially expected to get in March 2012. He now
hopes to get it in June.
Mr. Whalen's business is expanding beyond its base in the Upper
Midwest to states including Texas and Colorado. With limited air
service from its Moline, Ill., headquarters, "going most places
commercial can take all day," said Mr. Whalen, who currently has a
King Air propeller plane with lower speed and less range. The
HondaJet is "a tool that's going to allow us to go from a
Midwestern company…past six or seven states."
Mr. Fujino is looking to the future. "A company has to have
longevity," he said of his strategic mandate. "We look at 20 years
or even 50 years of Honda's growth in the long term. In order to
have that kind of longevity, we have to invest [in] our
future."
Mr. Fujino showed no signs of slowing down. Sitting atop wings
he designed, he said, "I'll learn to fly when I retire."
Eric Pfanner contributed to this article.
Write to Jon Ostrower at jon.ostrower@wsj.com
Access Investor Kit for Sumitomo Precision Products Co.,
Ltd.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=JP3405800008
Access Investor Kit for Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=JP3854600008
Access Investor Kit for The Boeing Co.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US0970231058
Access Investor Kit for Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US4381283088
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires