Osamu Suzuki, who has died aged 94, was one of the global automotive industry’s longest serving leaders. A director since 1963 of Suzuki, the motorcycle and small car manufacturer based in Hamatsu, Japan, he rose through the ranks to become in 1979 the firm’s president, a position he relinquished only in 2019 to ascend to the chairmanship. Latterly, as is customary with elder statemen of Japanese industry, he became an adviser, the title he still held at the time of his death.
When he first joined Suzuki, in 1958, it had been in the automobile business for only four years, building the tiny two-cylinder, air-cooled Suzulight car, in a country that was still finding its way as an industrial power. It had been founded in 1909 as a loom manufacturer, but the collapse of the cotton market in the early 1950s galvanised a move towards automotive endeavours.
Suzuki produced its first motorcycle – really a 36cc motorised pedal bike – in 1952 but 10 years later would notch up its first Isle of Man TT victory. In 1976, Barry Sheene won his first 500cc World Championship on a Suzuki RG500. The loom-making arm of the firm was separated from the automotive side in 1960 and, under Osamu, Suzuki expanded into the production of outboard motors, wheelchairs, all-terrain vehicles, and prefabricated housing.
He progressed conservatively to make Suzuki the largest small car producer in Japan, always with a keen eye on cost cutting, even on a shop-floor level: in one plant he famously had some of the light bulbs removed to save $40,000 on electricity.
Suzuki motorcycles arrived in the UK long before its cars, alongside Honda and others helping decimate the British motorcycle industry from the mid-60s onwards with dependable, easy to maintain two-wheeled machinery.
The now collectable Whizzkid Coupe and Jimny off-roader (sold in the UK as the Satana and Samurai) were relative latecomers to the Japanese car sales bonanza from 1979. The Suzuki Alto of the early 80s was the cheapest automatic car then available in the UK, priced at £4,000, while the 1985 Swift was the firm’s first four-cylinder “supermini” sized vehicle.
The Bedford Rascal – better known as the “Sooty van” in the TV puppet series Sooty and Sweep – was really a rebadged Suzuki Carry, or “kei” truck, built to conform to strict Japanese light commercial specifications. These Rascal/Carry trucks were a spin-off from a deal that Osamu Suzuki struck with General Motors in 1981 to sell its economy cars in North America with Chevrolet badges, in return for giving GM a 5% stake in the company.
Osamu would also preside in 2009 over a tie-up with VW that ended in a court battle, and latterly collaborated with Toyota on the design of self-driving cars.
From the late 60s, production of the small Fronte rear-engined cars ramped up under Osamu’s leadership but, unlike its rivals, Nissan, Toyota and Mazda, Suzuki did not give in to the temptation to move upmarket, preferring to use its resources to build satellite plants in emerging markets where its small runabout cars had most appeal.
Beginning in Thailand in 1967 – and followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and Pakistan in the 70s and 80s – Suzuki expanded its operations on the Pacific rim rather than tackle local rivals head on, although between 1967 and 1970 Japanese production rose substantially, based at four new locations.
In the early 80s Suzuki became the first Japanese manufacturer to establish a manufacturing outlet in India, where its new front-wheel drive Alto/Fronte broke the stranglehold of the outdated Hindustan ambassador (a locally built 1950s Morris Oxford), and the equally ancient Fiat 1100-based Premier Padmini to become the bestselling car in India. Osamu Suzuki made over 200 flights to India in an effort to get this historic deal done.
By the beginning of the 2000s Suzuki had 60 factories in 31 countries as sales rose tenfold to a value of $19bn.
The son of Toshiki and Matsuda Shunzo, and born in the city of Gero, Gifo Prefecture, in central Japan, Osamu graduated in law from Chuo University in Tokyo in 1953 and worked in the loans office of a local bank before joining Suzuki in 1958. Around the same time, he married Shoko Suzuki, the granddaughter of the company’s founder, and, as per local tradition when there is no male heir, adopted his wife’s family name.
Had Hirotaka Ono, the son-in-law he had been grooming to take his place, not died of cancer in 2007, Osamu would probably have enjoyed a much longer retirement. A keen golfer into his 90s, five years ago he handed the reigns of the company to his son Toshihiro, the eldest of his three children.
