Former Toyota President Hiroshi Okuda dies at 93

Toyota Motor Corporation has announced that its former president and chairman, Hiroshi Okuda, passed away on 8 August at the age of 93.

Okuda was the first Toyota president from outside the founding Toyoda family in nearly three decades. He took over as president in 1995, at a difficult time for the company following the collapse of Japan's economic bubble, and went on to oversee a period of significant change.

Born in December 1932, Hiroshi Okuda graduated from Faculty of Commerce and Management of Hitotsubashi University.

He joined Toyota in 1955, starting out in the accounting department, and spent more than five decades with the company. He later took charge of Toyota's operations in the Asia-Pacific region.

In 1982, Okuda was appointed to Toyota's board, bringing him into the group's senior management. Thirteen years later, he became Toyota's 12th president, breaking with the company's long-standing tradition of appointing presidents from the Toyoda family.

When Okuda took the top job, Toyota was facing a challenging business environment as Japan's bubble economy collapsed.

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One of his major moves was to push ahead with hybrid technology at a time when there was still considerable uncertainty over its commercial prospects. He also introduced changes to Toyota's management structure, including reducing layers of seniority-based management and cutting excess costs.

The result was the Toyota Prius, which went on sale in 1997 as the world's first mass-produced hybrid passenger car. The model went on to become one of the defining products in Toyota's history and established the company as a leader in hybrid technology.

Okuda also accelerated Toyota's overseas expansion, with new production facilities established across North America, Europe and Asia. Models such as the RAV4 helped Toyota capitalise on growing demand for SUVs and strengthened its position in key markets around the world.

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After stepping down as Toyota's President and Chairman, Okuda was appointed as the first Chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) in 2002, playing an active role in national economic policy consultations and international economic cooperation.

He left both the Toyota chairmanship and the Keidanren post in 2006, but remained a Toyota adviser until 2018.

Okuda once said in an interview, "A company must change when things are going well. There's no point in trying to change after things start going bad."