Soichiro Honda
Honda had developed its global motorcycle brand through track racing, with Soichiro Honda collecting the world's best engineers together to create winning road motorcycles such as the Honda RC116. However, Honda pulled out of motorcycle racing in 1967, leaving it with a world class development team with nothing to do. Up until this point, motocross had been dominated by 4 stroke powered machines, and had no official national championship in Japan. Further, Soichiro Honda had publicly announced that Honda would never build 2 stroke powered motorcycles.