Osamu Suzuki, the brilliant penman who led Japan's Suzuki Motor for more than four decades and played a major role in turning India into a booming auto market, has died at the age of 94.
He died on Dec. 25 of lymphoma, said the company, which he had steered assiduously, when he was chief executive officer or chairman, out of its small car market.
The cheap, boxy, 660-cc Japan-specific cars benefited from big tax breaks but demanded the tight reins on costs that have become an integral part of the automaker's DNA.
Still, Suzuki's economy was legendary. He ordered the factory ceiling to be lowered to save on air conditioning and to fly high class airplanes even in his old age.
“Forever,” or “until the day I die,” were the humorous responses to questions about how long he would stay at the company, which he held firmly into his 70s and 80s.
Born Osamu Matsuda, Suzuki adopted his wife's surname as a common practice in Japanese families without a male heir.
The former banker joined the company founded by his grandfather in 1958 and worked his way up to become president two decades later.
In the 1970s, he saved the company from the brink of collapse by convincing Toyota Motor to supply engines that met new emissions regulations, but which Suzuki Motor had not yet developed.
More success followed with the introduction of the Alto small car in 1979, which became a huge hit, boosting the automaker's bargaining power when it tied up with General Motors in 1981.
India's 'people's car'
Suzuki then took a big and risky decision to invest a year's worth of the company's earnings to build a national car company in India.
His personal interest was fueled by a strong desire “to be number one somewhere in the world,” he would later recall.
At that time, India was a car hub with annual sales of less than 40,000 cars, mostly British knock-offs.
The government had recently nationalized Maruti, which had been founded in 1971 as a pet project of Sanjay Gandhi, son of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to produce an affordable, made-in-India “people's car”.
Maruti needed a foreign partner, but an early collaboration with Renault fell through as the proposed sedan was deemed too expensive and fuel-efficient enough for domestic needs.
The Maruti Group knocked on many doors but was dwarfed by companies including Fiat and Subaru and – coincidentally – Suzuki Motor.
The partnership only came about after a director of Suzuki Motor in India saw a newspaper article about Maruti's potential deal with Japanese small car rival Daihatsu.
He called the headquarters to hear that the Maruti team had been fired. Suzuki then sent a phone call to Maruti and quickly 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, launched in 1983, was an instant success.
Today, Maruti Suzuki, majority owned by Suzuki Motor, still controls about 40% of the Indian car market.
In class-oriented India, Suzuki also introduced change, emphasizing equality in the workplace, ordering open offices, a single canteen and uniforms for managers and assembly workers alike.
It's not all success
A month before his 80th birthday, Suzuki made a multi-billion dollar deal with giant Volkswagen in December 2009.
Considered a match made in heaven, it quickly falters, Suzuki Motor accuses its new top owner of trying to control it, and VW opposes the Japanese company's purchase of diesel engines from Fiat.
Suzuki Motor took VW to international court less than two years ago, eventually winning back the 19.9% stake it had sold to the German carmaker.
Suzuki, who often cited golf and work as the keys to his life, finally passed the baton as CEO to his son Toshihiro in 2016, and stayed on as chairman for another five years until he was 91, maintaining an advisory role until the end.
Since 2016, his company has deepened its relationship with the world's largest car manufacturer Toyota, which acquired a 5% stake in Suzuki Motor in 2019. Maruti Suzuki will supply electric vehicles to Toyota from next year.
“To me, he was more than a respected business leader: he was like a father,” Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda said in a statement on Friday, honoring Suzuki as a small car driver.
“He was the father who built the Japanese kei (small area) car and developed it into a car for the Japanese people.”
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