Early Success for Suzuki

Suzuki started out its long history with silky smooth success as the Suzuki Loom Works in 1909 in Japan’s booming silk industry. Suzuki committed itself right from the beginning to making better products that were easier to use. For almost 3 decades, Michio Suzuki thrived in the lucrative looming business. He filed scores of patents over the decades, and had even designed an innovative type of weaving loom.

Suzuki worked hard and achieved much success, but he soon realized that he would have to expand if he wanted to continue to prosper as he had in the past. After a lot of research, he quickly realized that the best thing to produce would be a small car, so in 1937 Suzuki started planning and produced several prototypes that featured liquid-cooled, 4-stroke engines.

Suzuki's FIrst Motorcycles

Another victim of war-torn Japan, Suzuki faced a looming threat of failure when it was essentially put out of business by the Japanese government as they deemed civilian cars to be an inessential commodity. After the war, Suzuki realized that Japanese people needed a cheap, reliable mode of transportation, so they started mounting engines to bicycles.