Osamu Suzuki, who ran Suzuki Motor Corp., known for its minicars and motorcycles, across several decades and drove the company’s global expansion, has died. He was 94.
Suzuki died of lymphoma on Dec. 25, the company said in a statement.
Born Osamu Matsuda, Suzuki married a member of the circle of relatives who gave the Hamamatsu, Japan-based automaker its name. During his long tenure, he formed partnerships with General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG to sell cars in North America and Europe and leveraged Suzuki Motor’s expertise in small cars to gain a dominant share in the Indian market.
“If I had to pay attention to everyone, things would slow down,” Suzuki said of his leadership philosophy in “I’m a Small Business Boss,” a Japanese-language memoir published in 2009. “Never stop or you will lose. “
Suzuki’s 28 years as president, spread over two terms, made him the longest-serving executive at a global automaker. He passed the presidency to his son in June 2015 and took over as lead CEO, a dual name he held for a year before resigning as CEO following a lie about fuel economy. The company admitted to employing unapproved strategies to control the fuel consumption of its cars in Japan, leading to a sharp sell-off in the company’s shares and a wave of takeovers.
The automaker sold about 3. 2 million cars worldwide in the fiscal year ending March 2024, the dominant Japanese automaker and global No. 1 Toyota Motor Corp. , according to data compiled by Bloomberg. More than a portion of those cars were sold in India, where the company’s Indian subsidiary, Maruti Suzuki, owns most of it.
A former bank employee, Osamu Suzuki got his start in the automotive business thanks to his arranged marriage to Shoko Suzuki, a granddaughter of Michio Suzuki, who founded Suzuki Motor’s predecessor, a loom manufacturer, in 1909. Osamu Suzuki took his wife’s surname, as is the Japanese custom when there are no male heirs to a family business.
He joined the company in 1958, three years after launching its first motorcycle, the ColledaCOX 125cc 4-stroke and the Suzulight 360cc 2-stroke, which helped usher in the minivehicle era. in Japan.
He held various management positions before becoming president in 1978. The following year, he made his first mark by introducing the Alto mini car to Japan. A complete success, this model is characterized by having resurrected the national minicar market.
Betting that the company could establish a foothold in small markets neglected by larger rivals, he led Suzuki Motor’s overseas expansion by building production bases from Pakistan to Hungary.
In 1981, Detroit-based GM, then the world’s largest automaker, agreed to acquire a stake in Suzuki Motor, which was seeking to expand in North America and Europe. GM would later own up to 20% of Suzuki Motor after doubling its stake in 2001. Following five consecutive quarterly losses, the American automaker began promoting its Suzuki Motor shares for money in 2006 and completed the divestment in 2008. GM declared bankruptcy. the following year, in the midst of the global currency crisis.
After the alliance with GM was dissolved, Suzuki Motor agreed to an alliance with Germany’s VW, which bought a 19. 9% stake in 2010.
The alliance turned acrimonious after VW described Suzuki Motor as a “partner” in an annual report, with Suzuki accusing VW of damaging its honor by claiming it had violated its partnership agreement by buying engines from Italy’s Fiat SpA. The partnership ended in September 2015 when Suzuki Motor bought back VW’s shares worth $3. 8 billion.
Osamu Suzuki said the company would price its independence in its long-term relationships with other automakers. Suzuki formed an equity alliance with Toyota in 2019.
Its greatest achievement was thought to be its expansion into India. He came across a newspaper article about the Indian government’s search for a car production partner and, in 1982, met a team from the South Asian country at a Tokyo hotel.
Suzuki Motor agreed to set up a venture with the Indian government outside New Delhi and acquired a 26% stake in the state-owned carmaker Maruti Udyog. The next year, the venture rolled out the Maruti 800 small car, which was so popular that waiting times to purchase it stretched as long as three years.
Maruti, now part of Suzuki Motor, has temporarily become India’s largest automaker, even as its market share eroded through Hyundai Motor Co. and Tata Motors Ltd.
Suzuki is also one of the world’s leading motorcycle brands today, promoting around 1. 9 million units in the 12 months ended March 31. The logo stands out for winning world titles.
Osamu Suzuki was born Jan. 30, 1930, in Gero, a city in central Japan’s Gifu prefecture. He was the fourth son in a farming family. Aspiring to be a politician, he worked part-time as a junior high-school teacher and night guard while completing his degree in law at Chuo University in Tokyo, according to a March 2009 article in Nikkei BP magazine.
After graduating from Chuo in 1953, he went to work at a bank until his marriage brought him into the family business.
After stepping down as president in 2000, he became president and CEO of Suzuki Motor. He returned to the presidency at the age of 78 in December 2008, when Suzuki Motor expected its first profit decline in 8 years as the global recession and tightened lending weighed on auto demand.
“In the face of an extremely difficult business environment, I have to stand at the forefront,” he wrote in his memoir. “In the past 30 years, a sense of complacency has spread throughout the company. As the one who brought the company to where it is, I have to correct this and lead the company until the economy improves.”
Suzuki felt a similar sense of duty over the company’s fuel testing practices in Japan, and apologized to a room of reporters in 2016 when his son and president, Toshihiro Suzuki, stood by him. Suzuki Motor’s “vertical culture” has made it complicated. have younger workers come to the checkpoint in case of problems with the tests, Suzuki said.
Osamu Suzuki ceded his title as CEO and accepted a 40% pay cut but remained as chairman, a title he held until 2021, just as the advent of electric cars started to roil the world’s legacy automakers in earnest.
At the briefing in which he announced his retirement, Suzuki expressed his satisfaction with the company’s direction and added that he would “continue to be available for advice. ” He also assured the public that he is “full of life”, having played golf 47 times in the last year.
He and his had 3 children.