Honda’s CEO gears up
TOKYO - When CEO Takeo Fukui says he would spend $10 billion to rack up a Formula One victory for Honda, you get the sense that he really means it.
Under Fukui’s five-year leadership, Honda Motor’s car sales have jumped by a third and profits by an even bigger margin to a record $5.8 billion last year.
But it’s the lack of an F1 win that sticks in the craw of the 63-year-old former engineer, who joined Honda precisely because it was the first Japanese automaker to enter the world’s premier motor sport.
Fukui just doesn’t like to lose.
"When it comes to F1, our score is zero. It kills me," Fukui, once an amateur racer himself, told a small group of reporters last week. "If I could fix it with a trillion yen I would, but it’s not a problem that money can solve."
