who do you think was or is the most influential man in the motorcycle world?

When you include the word "world" it would be very hard to argue against Sochiro. And with out his active public media funding Japan's history may have gone entirely different...or America's or Europe's history may have been a slower advancing success instead of a dismal failure!

The ppl who came up with the 1959 Honda ad campaign "You meet the nicest people on a Honda".

That brought the motorcycle into popular use in the western world. Bikes had primarily been for military use, and stupid movies in the 1950s convinced the public that bikes were for hoodlums. The idea that scooters and bikes could be used by housewives, students, young couples for recreation was new to the West. Japan was already full of bikes as transportation, due to size of a small island nation and immediate need for cheap transportation after the devastation of their infrastructures following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Everyone was on bikes.

America's booming economy following the war was focused on cars and trucks. The idea that a motorcycle would be recreation for "nice" people brought us to today: a bike in (almost) every garage and driveway.

America's Bigger is Better attitude spurred further R and D, so now bikes cost as much as cars, ironically.

Way too many choices.

Don't disagree with yours, Honda pushed the cart over the hill with a great deal of enthusiasm in both making and racing all sorts of motorbikes and for many years. And that's my point.

I believe it was individual racers looking for MORE that created the purpose to create those better machines.

Valentino Rossi #46 FTW!!!

Bill Davis, inventor of the softail

Soichiro is the more usual spelling.

"the doctor" valentino rossi

sonny barger