Osamu Suzuki, a resourceful tightwad who ran Japan’s Suzuki Motor for more than four decades and played a key role in turning India into a booming automobile market, has died at the age of 94.
He died on Christmas Day of lymphoma, said the company, which he ambitiously steered, during his tenure as CEO or president, out of its core mini-vehicle market.
Japan-specific, boxy, 660cc economy cars benefited from generous tax breaks, but required tight cost control that turned out to be a key part of the automaker’s DNA.
Still, Suzuki’s frugality was legendary: He ordered factory ceilings lowered to save on air conditioning and traveled economy class on airplanes even late in life.
“Forever” or “until the day I die” were characteristic humorous responses with which he dodged questions about how long he would remain in the company, over which he maintained strict control until he was 70 and 80 years old.
Born Osamu Matsuda, Suzuki took his wife’s surname through adoption in a common practice among Japanese families lacking a male heir.
The former banker joined the company founded by her grandfather in 1958 and rose 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 him with engines that met new emissions regulations, but which Suzuki Motor had not yet developed.
Greater success followed with the 1979 launch of the Alto mini vehicle, which became a huge success, increasing the automaker’s bargaining power when it partnered with General Motors in 1981.
India
Suzuki then made a major and risky decision: investing a year’s worth of the company’s profits to build a domestic automaker for India.
His personal interest was motivated by a strong desire “to be number one somewhere in the world,” he later recalled.
At the time, India was an automobile backwater with annual sales of less than 40,000 vehicles, mostly British knockoffs.
The government had just nationalized Maruti, created 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 the initial collaboration with Renault failed because the sedan under consideration was considered too expensive and insufficiently fuel efficient for domestic needs.
The Maruti team knocked on many doors but was widely snubbed by brands like Fiat and Subaru and, by accident, Suzuki Motor.
The partnership only emerged after a Suzuki Motor director in India saw a newspaper article about a possible Maruti deal with Japanese small car rival Daihatsu.
He called the headquarters to know that the Maruti equipment had been rejected. Suzuki then sent a telex to Maruti and quickly invited the team to return to Japan, asking for a second chance.
A few months later a letter of intent was signed.
The first car, the Maruti 800 hatchback based on the Alto, was launched in 1983 and became an instant hit.
Today, Maruti Suzuki, majority owned by Suzuki Motor, still controls about 40 percent of the Indian automobile market.
In class-conscious India, Suzuki also ushered in change, insisting on equality in the workplace, mandating open-plan offices, a single canteen, and uniforms for executives and assembly line workers alike.
However, not all efforts were a success.
A month before turning 80, Suzuki closed a multi-million dollar alliance with the giant Volkswagen in December 2009.
Considered a perfect combination, it soon failed: Suzuki Motor accused its new main shareholder of trying to control it, while VW opposed the Japanese firm’s purchase of Fiat diesel engines.
Suzuki Motor took VW to an international arbitration tribunal in less than two years and eventually managed to buy back the 19.9 percent stake it had sold to the German automaker.
Suzuki, who often cited golf and work as keys to his health, eventually passed the baton as CEO to his son Toshihiro in 2016, and remained as chairman for another five years until age 91, maintaining an advisory role until the end.
