Y'all, Honda has produced 400 million motorcycles since 1949 – Roadshow

A lot of people tend to think of Honda as a car company that also builds motorcycles (among other things), but the truth is that Honda’s motorcycle operations — like BMW’s — predate its cars by a pretty sizable chunk of time.

In that time, Honda introduced a ton of iconic two-wheeled vehicles like the original Super Cub (aka the best-selling vehicle in all of human history), the Fireblade and the Goldwing. All of these massive successes around the globe have led Honda to where it is now: parading around in a bathrobe like Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights and celebrating the fact that it’s produced 400 million motorcycles since 1949.

Just think about that number. That’s enough so that every American would have 1.22 Honda motorcycles. That’s like, a Super Cub and a spare motor for every single American. For another fun comparison, Volkswagen’s Beetle — a car that was in production for 65 years, mind you — only managed around 21.5 million units built. If you took 400 million Honda Groms and lined them up end to end, you could circle the globe 17.56 times.

Here’s a number that might even be crazier: 20 million. That (as of 2018) is the annual total of motorcycles produced globally for Honda. For comparison, in 2016, Ford produced 6.429 million vehicles globally. While cars are obviously more complicated to build than motorcycles, that’s still a pretty dramatic disparity.

So the next time you see a motorcyclist puttering around on a Monkey or even an Africa Twin in the pouring rain, remember that statistically speaking, you’re the weirdo for not being down with a two-wheeled lifestyle.