Excerpts from the address by Shigeru Takagi,
president and managing director of Honda Motor Europe Ltd.,
on November 11, 2008 at the EICMA Fair in Milan:

“This year, Honda is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a company, 50 years of participation in racing and 30 years of V4 engines. To date, Honda has built vehicles with V4 engines for just under 1 million customers.”
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“Last week, Honda celebrated a milestone. A total of 200 million motor cycles had been produced by the end of September 2008. Large-scale serial production began at Honda in 1949 with the Dream D.”

“It has always been Honda’s desire to open up the pleasures of mobility to its customers. Customer satisfaction has always been the focus of our attention. Their expectations were not only to be met, but exceeded.”

“Our efforts have meant that the company has grown continuously.” Last year, Honda delivered more than 13 million motor cycles around the world. I don’t think that it will take very long before we can celebrate the next milestone.”

“As I already announced at the Intermot Fair in Cologne, Honda is moving into a new era. That was the reason for choosing the theme “New Beginnings.” This is represented by our V4 Concept Bike which was unveiled at Intermot.”

“The reactions we received from around the world, from customers, visitors to the Fair, dealers and the media were overwhelming. For this reason, we are taking the opportunity today to announce more details. We hope that you are as excited about our plans as we ourselves are.”

“Many of you have asked yourselves: “Is this V4 Concept Bike just a design study? Is there any connection to a future model?”

“I am happy to be able to confirm today that there is a link to more than one model in our future model lineup. The first production machine related to the V4 Concept Bike will be delivered in the first half of 2010. And there be more to come.”

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