Honda D-Type

The Honda D-Type is the first fully fledged motorcycle that Honda manufactured. The bike was also known as the Type D and Model D, and it was the first of a series of Honda models named Dream. The D-Type was produced from 1949 to 1951. In October 1946 Soichiro Honda established Honda Gijutsu Kenkyu Sho, the Honda Technical Research Laboratory, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. Its earliest product was a motorised bicycle, called a pon-pon in the Hamamatsu area, which used a surplus wartime generator engine made by Mikuni Shoko and a belt drive to the rear wheel. When the supply of surplus motors was gone, Honda designed a unique two-stroke engine as a replacement, with rotary valves, a stepped-diameter piston and a tall cylinder head extension that earned it the nickname chimney. That engine did not reach production, and the D-Type that followed was the first complete Honda motorcycle.