Hiroshi Okuda, who served as president and then chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has died. He was 93.
A lifetime Toyota employee, Okuda joined just as it began establishing itself as a manufacturing powerhouse in the post-World War II era and rose through the ranks to become president in 1995 — the first person to do so from outside the company’s founding family in a generation.
He stood out from the crowd in Japan for being tall, outspoken and a risk-taker and from his peers globally by championing novel cars that became best-sellers, such as the Prius gas-electric hybrid and RAV4 SUV. Internally, he won a reputation for cost-cutting prowess and quick decision-making to fend off what he saw as encroaching “big company disease” and complacency.
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