Hikaru Official Badging
The Early Years
Hikaru Heavy Industries was founded in Sapporo, Hokkaido in 1958 by a 25 year old Kaichou (title) Yuiichi Hikaru out of a small garage his family ran. The company spent its early days gathering influence in the region, setting up relationships with resource providers and of course having a few talks with their local government wing about providing financial support. It was hard in those first few years, with the Kaichou alongside his workforce living on incredibly meagre salaries, but with time they finally began working to make a name for themselves in the local automotive world.
In their first factory that had been finished in late 1959, they would make themselves known initially by fabricating various engine internals for a local shipbuilding company, and gained a remarkably good reputation born from the unusually high quality of the parts. Even considering the reasonably large profits, it would still take over a year before the local government gained enough trust in the company to provide them with the starting funds to begin purchasing and rigging up automobile manufacturing tools.
From there, the sailing was smoother, and while a portion of the team tirelessly set about installing the tools, the a second group was tasked with an incredible challenge. They would have to - essentially completely from scratch - design a car. As their factories and management buildings were built around them, their papers being damaged from leaks and wind blowing in through unfinished walls, they toiled away, pouring their hearts into a car that they believed would change their fortunes forever.
In mid-1962, they finally completed their work after almost two years of pure strain and stress. It would be a small economy coupe codenamed the H-希望 (H-Kibou or Hikaru-Hope), equipped with a small engine but just enough sportiness to not put the driver to sleep. As a new company they had to at that point spend many months working through safety and financial documents to have their car certified for production.
It was only in the early months of 1964 that they released their first car. Seeing around him the trend among Japanese car makers of giving their cars Western names, the Kaichou decided he’d spit in their faces and give his car a quintessentially Japanese name, one that held spirit and had a bit of kick to it. It would be named after a critical part of Japanese history, a name that would hopefully invigorate a sense of patriotism within the customer. It would be named the ‘刀 (Katana)’.
Hikaru would hit relatively immediate success not only in Hokkaido but in the surrounding prefectures with their car, for it was said to have a good blend of economy and fun, a surprising statement given how anemic the engine was at that point. This sudden success wouldn’t be wasted in the company either - as they worked they steadily came up with ways to be more efficient in their construction until they finally started making large profits, enough to begin working on a second edition of their car.
This second edition of the car would come around in early 1967 with a highly uprated engine, bringing the total displacement from 0.7 to 1.7 litres. This would offer a horsepower increase, and with improved skills in design, it would maintain a relatively similar fuel mileage rating too. It would be aimed not to replace the original Katana (which would continue to be made until mid-1972 when it became critically outdated), but would serve as Hikaru’s entry into the still-small performance car segment. Although it was still generally considered a ‘hillbilly joyrider’ outside the northern prefectures, it would continue the success of the Katana, cementing itself as a staple of Hokkaido’s roads.
Stuff that’s a bit better documented:
The next great evolution would arrive in the early months of 1968, when a project that had seemingly been developed without any oversight by the Kaicho was dropped on his small desk tucked away in the corner of the management building. Sitting next to the Kaichou and overseeing the interaction was the Kaichou’s advisor, Akihiro Nonomiya. Upon seeing this affront to their authority, Nonomiya immediately grabbed the paper, and deposited it in the waste basket, and reprimanded the designer, telling him that it was ‘not his place to direct the company’, and that he should ‘know his place.’
Needless to say, that designer soon got what he wanted. Within weeks, the plans to set into production this radical new car were drafted and being prepared to put into action, all by the direct order of the Kaichou. Everyone soon knew about the car, it would be a relatively large coupe equipped with a sleek, swooping frame and a mildly wedge-shaped front end. It was all well and good that they had a design, but Nonomiya soon brought up a good point. The only engine that they currently had in the works was the now outdated 1.7L unit that they used in the previous Katana. They’d need a radically more powerful engine for such a large car, and there would be no way that they could build it themselves, the factory was already overfull. There was only one good option: Look to the outside world.
