Hirotoshi Honda began building his own racing car while still a student, working in a workshop at his father's house. Masao Kimura brought decades of Honda engineering experience, having worked for Honda R&D and Honda Racing Service before co-founding Mugen. The company started in 1973 manufacturing special parts for motocross bikes, then expanded as Honda's vehicle lineup grew, eventually specialising in tuning Honda engines from the early Civic through to sophisticated race-specification units.
Mugen's product range broadened to include body kits and aftermarket parts for road cars. The Mugen NSX prototype of 1992 represented an early ambition to build production-oriented performance variants of Honda road cars.
Following a tax evasion allegation against Hirotoshi Honda in late 2003, Mugen was restructured in early 2004. The new legal entity M-TEC retained the Mugen trademark, the Asaka headquarters near Honda's R&D facility at Wako, and the existing staff. Shin Nagaosa, former engineering division manager at Mugen, was appointed to head the restructured company.
Mugen expanded into single-seater motorsport progressively through the 1980s. In 1986 it joined forces with Honda to build an F3000 engine for Japan's newly launched F3000 series. From 1989 Mugen entered European F3000 with the MF308 engine, winning the championship that year with Jean Alesi driving an Eddie Jordan Racing Reynard. Mugen simultaneously built Formula Three engines tuned from Honda units, winning the 1990 British Formula Three Championship with Mika Hakkinen driving for West Surrey Racing, and again in 1991 with Rubens Barrichello.
The 1989 season also saw Mugen produce its first 3.5-litre V8 Formula One concept engine, codenamed MF350, though no team ran it in competition at that stage.
Mugen's first Formula One engines, prepared from Honda V10s supplied to McLaren in 1989 and 1990, were used by Tyrrell in 1991. From 1992 the engines carried the Mugen designation and moved to the Footwork team, with drivers Aguri Suzuki and Michele Alboreto. After Honda's formal withdrawal from Formula One at the end of 1992, Mugen maintained its own programme, moving to Lotus in 1993 and then to Ligier from 1995 onward.
The Ligier partnership produced immediate results: the team scored points at nine races in 1995 and earned Mugen's first Formula One victory at the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix with Olivier Panis. When Alain Prost took over Ligier for 1997, the renamed Prost Grand Prix team continued with Mugen engines, scoring two podiums at Brazil and Spain.
The most successful phase of Mugen's Formula One involvement came with Jordan Grand Prix from 1998 to 2000. The 1998 season brought Jordan's first-ever victory at the Belgian Grand Prix, where Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher delivered a one-two finish. In 1999, Heinz-Harald Frentzen won the French and Italian Grands Prix, and Jordan finished third in the Constructors' Championship with 61 points — the team's best-ever result. Mugen departed Formula One after the 2000 season, its nine-year run in the sport's premier class having yielded race victories and competitive seasons with multiple teams.
As European F3000 became a spec-series in 1996, the Japanese F3000 series responded by appointing Mugen as sole engine supplier under the rechristened Formula Nippon banner. Mugen held the exclusive supply contract until M-TEC lost it for the 2006 season, when rules were changed to allow Toyota associate TOM'S to join as an additional engine supplier.
From 1998, Mugen entered Japanese sportscar competition through the JGTC championship with Honda NSX machinery. The Mugen/Dome NSX partnership won the team championship in 2000 with Ryo Michigami, and Mugen-prepared NSX cars claimed multiple race victories across the early 2000s.
In 2001, Mugen developed the MF408S, a 4.0-litre naturally aspirated V8 designed for prototype racing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the American Le Mans Series. The engine debuted in a Panoz chassis at the 2002 Sebring 12 Hours. A later enlarged version, the MF458S, displaced 4.5 litres. Both units prioritised compact dimensions and reliability, reflecting Mugen's philosophy of saving fuel and managing power through intelligent engineering rather than displacement alone.
Mugen became the dominant force in electrically powered motorcycle racing at the Isle of Man TT through its Shinden bike programme. Competing in the TT Zero class from 2012, the Mugen Shinden series progressively raised the benchmark for electric motorcycle performance, increasing average lap speed around the Snaefell Mountain Course from 109.527 mph with John McGuinness in 2012 to 121.91 mph by 2019. By that year Mugen had accumulated five TT Zero race victories.
Mugen occupies a distinctive position in motorsport: an organisation that consistently extracted race-winning performance from Honda-derived engines without formal factory backing, built an independent championship-winning Formula One engine programme across nine seasons, and diversified credibly into sportscar and electric motorcycle racing. The Mugen name, representing unlimited ambition in engineering, remained the company's defining identity through its restructuring and continues under the M-TEC corporate umbrella.