Photo/Illutration Masahiro Inoue, right, the president-designate of Daihatsu Motor Co., attends a news conference in Tokyo on Feb. 13 with Koji Sato, president of Toyota Motor Corp. (Wataru Sekita)

The president of embattled Daihatsu Motor Co. is stepping down following decades of testing irregularities that forced the automaker to suspend all vehicle production.

Soichiro Okudaira, who hailed from parent Toyota Motor Corp., will be replaced by Masahiro Inoue, Toyota’s chief executive officer of Latin America and the Caribbean region, as of March 1, Daihatsu announced on Feb. 13.

"Daihatsu's leadership will be changed to enable the company to prevent a recurrence (of the misconduct) and regain its original strengths," Toyota President Koji Sato said at a news conference in Tokyo.

He also said the Toyota group plans to review Daihatsu's business domain and have the company focus on minivehicles with engine displacements of 660 cc or less. 

In addition to Okudaira and Matsubayashi, three other directors will resign from the board. Only one director will be retained to take charge of building a system to prevent a recurrence.

"We will thoroughly implement measures to prevent a recurrence with the help of Toyota where Daihatsu alone is not enough," Inoue, the president-designate, told the news conference. 

Chairman Sunao Matsubayashi, who has spent his entire career at Daihatsu, will also resign.

In an investigation report released Dec. 20, a third-party panel set up by Daihatsu said Okudaira and other senior executives failed to foresee the possibility of misconduct and did not take preventive measures as the company tried to accelerate vehicle development.

The fixation with shorter development schedules put employees in charge of government certification testing in the final stage of development process under “intense all-or-nothing pressure,” the report said.

The third-party panel emphasized that Daihatsu’s senior executives were to blame first and foremost, not rank-and-file employees engaged in the fraudulent practices.

Okudaira took over as president in June 2017, a year after Toyota turned Daihatsu, which is a major player in the minivehicle market, into a wholly owned subsidiary.

In a report submitted to transport minister Tetsuo Saito on Feb. 9, Daihatsu said it plans to extend the standard vehicle development schedule by 40 percent and increase personnel responsible for certification testing seven-fold by around June from the level in January 2023.

The changing of the guard was announced a day after Daihatsu resumed production of two vehicle models at a plant in Oyamazaki, Kyoto Prefecture.

Daihatsu Motor Kyushu Co., a subsidiary, will begin production of 10 more vehicle models at its plant in Nakatsu, Oita Prefecture, on Feb. 26.

But production is expected to remain halted at least until March 1 at the group’s two remaining plants in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, and Ryuo, Shiga Prefecture.

Related News