Onitsuka Tiger × Honda

Announced October 26, 1966, on the Honda stand at the 13th Tokyo Motor Show in Harumi, beside the new Super Cub C50. The brief came from Honda's sales department, which had noticed that the soba and ramen delivery men who bought so many Cubs were wearing through the left toes of their shoes within weeks. The Cub's heel-toe pedal gave the left foot all the work: toe down to change up, heel down to change down.

Kihachiro Onitsuka handled it the way he had handled the basketball court fifteen years earlier, by watching. Two men from the Kobe pattern room spent a fortnight riding pillion behind delivery boys around Kanda and Nihonbashi and came back with a list of what each foot actually did. The left shoe gained a black rubber toe guard and heel pad ribbed at 4 mm, the same pitch as the Cub's footpegs, so the pedal sits in the grooves. The right foot brakes and kicks the engine into life, and a lace caught on the kickstart lever was the second most common complaint, so the right shoe gained a cream kip flap that snaps shut over the laces.

Honda supplied polyethylene of the same grade as the Cub legshield, moulded into a thin heel counter that shrugs off a touch on a hot exhaust, with the wing moulded in rather than badged on. Soichiro Honda is said to have rejected the first blue sample as 'too Yamaha'. The upper is pale Cub blue nylon with cream kip overlays and red stripes to match the saddle. The outsole uses the 1951 suction pattern, for customers' wet kitchen floors rather than the road.

It sold through Honda dealers more than sports shops and was bought almost entirely by working riders, who replaced the left shoe more often than the right. The C50 accessory list printed it once, as part number 08820-045-000, the only footwear ever given a Honda part number. Dealers would sell a single left shoe on request.