09/08/97 THE MAN WHO PUT HONDA BACK IN THE RACE

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THE MAN WHO PUT HONDA BACK IN THE RACE

As befits the head of a car company, Nobuhiko Kawamoto finds sanctuary in his garage. When he's not at his office at Honda Motor Co.'s Tokyo headquarters or away on business, Kawamoto can often be found engrossed in the inner workings of a classic automobile. At the moment, he is tinkering with an open two-seater sports car that he declines to identify because it is not a Honda. ''What I'm making is primitive and mechanical,'' he says.
A fanatic's fascination with all things automotive helped put Kawamoto, 61, in the driver's seat at Honda. It also helped him rebuild Honda into a vastly more competitive company than the one he took command of seven years ago. Like most of Honda's past leaders, Kawamoto is an engineer. But unlike other contenders for the top job, he never worked outside the company's research and development subsidiary. He says he was chosen because of his willingness to seek the opinions of others.
GADGET MAN. But Kawamoto also proved he can think independently. When he became CEO, Japan's car market was flat, and the yen was soaring. He defied the downturn by reeling in the free-spending engineering culture that had nurtured him. Suddenly, engineers were forced to heed marketing studies and to slash new-car development costs.
Kawamoto's passion for cars dates back to childhood. Back then, in a country devastated by World War II, he knew only one Japanese who could afford a car. He says he hung around constantly, pestering his neighbor to start up his Austin Seven.
Determined to make a career in the automotive business, Kawamoto took college entrance exams three times before enrolling at Tohoku University to study engineering. He didn't confine his study to the classroom. Kawamoto organized a club that fixed up junked Buicks and Lincolns left behind by the American occupation forces. After tinkering far into the night, Kawamoto often fell asleep on his futon surrounded by gadgets. Friends remember him as determined to find his own way. ''He was the type of person who would stubbornly choose to follow a different path, separate from the group, when we went on hikes up mountains,'' says former classmate Hiroyuki Hashimoto. ''Sometimes we wouldn't see him until the evening.''
Kawamoto joined Honda right out of school in 1963, and quickly made his name as an engineer. A onetime designer of Honda's racing car engines, it was Kawamoto who conceived the retractable buglike headlights that made Honda's sporty 1986 Accord a hit. ''He is a visionary,'' says Executive Chief Engineer Takefumi Hiramatsu.
Although these days he's rarely seen in anything but a Honda--including, sometimes, a hand-built Honda NSX sports car--Kawamoto still stands out. Despite being the head of a major company in consensus-driven Japan, he rarely socializes with colleagues. ''I don't play golf. I don't play mah-jong. I don't sing karaoke,'' he says. ''I swim.'' And he freely admits that when business meetings drag, he may be smiling politely, but his mind is back in his garage, noodling over the latest problem with his two-seater.
But with the job has come change. Kawamoto no longer acts like a defiant hot-rodder, partly because Honda's success has put him in the spotlight. ''I have become more self-conscious,'' he admits. Company insiders expect Kawamoto to retire in two years. In the meantime, he continues to drive Honda hard.
By Emily Thornton in Tokyo

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