By Chang-Ran Kim
TOKYO (Reuters) – Osamu Suzuki, an ingenious pennypincher who led Japan’s Suzuki Motor 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 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 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 and – by accident – Suzuki Motor.