Obituary: Osamu Suzuki, who led Japanese automaker into India, dies at 94

Subaru

27/12/2024 10:52

(Adds Toyota chairman's quotes, paragraphs 28-30)
    By Chang-Ran Kim
       TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Osamu Suzuki, an ingenious
pennypincher who led Japan's Suzuki Motor  7269.T  for more than
four decades and played a key role in turning India into a
flourishing auto market, has died aged 94.
    He died on Christmas Day of lymphoma, said the company,
which he steered ambitiously, during his time as either chief
executive or chairman, out of its primary market of
minivehicles.
    The inexpensive, boxy, 660-cc cars specific to Japan
benefited from generous tax breaks, but demanded a stringent
reining-in of costs that proved to be a key part of the
automaker's DNA.
    Even so, Suzuki's thriftiness was legendary: he would order
factory ceilings lowered to save on air-conditioning and fly
economy class on airplanes even at an advanced age.
    "Forever," or "until the day I die," were signature humorous
responses with which he parried queries about how long he would
stay at the company, on which he retained a tight grip into his
70s and 80s.
    Born Osamu Matsuda, Suzuki took his wife's family name
through adoption in a practice common among Japanese families
lacking a male heir.
    The former banker joined the company founded by her
grandfather in 1958 and worked upwards through the ranks to
become president two decades later.
    In the 1970s, he saved the company from the brink of
collapse by convincing Toyota Motor  7203.T  to supply engines
that met new emissions regulations, but which Suzuki Motor had
yet to develop.
    More success followed with the 1979 launch of the Alto
minivehicle, which became a massive hit, boosting the
automaker's bargaining power when it tied up with General Motors
 GM.N  in 1981.
    
    INDIA 
    Suzuki then took a big and risky decision to invest a year's
worth of the company's earnings to build a national car maker
for India.
    His personal interest was motivated by a strong desire "to
be number one somewhere in the world", he would later recall. 
    At the time, India was an automotive backwater with annual
car sales below 40,000, mainly British knock-offs.
    The government had just nationalised Maruti, set up in 1971
as a pet project of Sanjay Gandhi, son of then-Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi, to produce an affordable, "people's car" made in
India.
    Maruti needed a foreign partner but early collaboration with
Renault fell through as the sedan being considered was deemed
too expensive and insufficiently fuel-efficient for domestic
needs.
    The Maruti team knocked on many doors but was snubbed widely
by brands including Fiat and Subaru  7270.T  and - by accident -
Suzuki Motor.
    The partnership only came about after a Suzuki Motor
director in India saw a newspaper article about a potential
Maruti deal with Japanese small-car rival Daihatsu.
    He telephoned headquarters to learn that the Maruti team had
been turned away. Suzuki then telexed Maruti and hastily invited
the team back to Japan, asking for a second chance.
    A letter of intent was signed within months.
    The first car, the Maruti 800 hatchback based on the Alto,
was launched in 1983, becoming an instant success.
    Today, Maruti Suzuki  MRTI.NS , majority-held by Suzuki
Motor, still commands roughly 40% of India's car market.
    In class-conscious India, Suzuki also ushered in change,
insisting on equality in the workplace, ordering open-plan
offices, a single canteen and uniforms for executives and
assembly-line workers alike.
    Not all endeavours were a success, however. 
    A month shy of his 80th birthday, Suzuki clinched a
multi-billion-dollar tie-up with giant Volkswagen in December
2009.
    Touted as a match made in heaven, it soon faltered, with
Suzuki Motor accusing its new top shareholder of trying to
control it, while VW objected to the Japanese firm's purchase of
diesel engines from Fiat.
    Suzuki Motor took VW to an international arbitration court
in less than two years, eventually succeeding in buying back the
stake of 19.9% it had sold to the German automaker.
    Suzuki, who often cited golf and work as the keys to his
health, finally passed the baton as CEO to his son Toshihiro in
2016, and stayed on as chairman for another five years until age
91, keeping an advisory role until the end.
    Since 2016, his company has deepened ties with the world's
biggest carmaker Toyota, which acquired a 5% stake in Suzuki
Motor in 2019. Maruti Suzuki is set to supply electric cars for
Toyota from next year.
        "To me, he was more than an admired business leader: he
was like a father," Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda said in a Friday
statement, honouring Suzuki as a trailblazer of minivehicles.
  
        "He was a father figure who developed Japan's kei car
(minivehicle) and nurtured it into Japan's people's car."
  

 (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Clarence
Fernandez, Peter Graff)
 ((mailto:ran.kim@thomsonreuters.com; +81-3-4520-1228;))