Daihatsu Executives To Step Down After Embarrassing Safety Saga

Daihatsu Motor’s President and Chairman would step down, Toyota Motor Corporation announced on 13 February 2024. Masahiro Inoue, Toyota’s CEO for Latin America and the Caribbean, will replace Soichiro Okudaira as Daihatsu’s President from 1 March 2024.

Source: Reuters

Daihatsu found itself in hot water after a rigged collision safety test exposé. The Toyota subsidiary admitted last November it manipulated safety tests since 1989 (for one discontinued model).

The rigging affected 64 models, including some sold under the Toyota brand. Daihatsu also will be removed from a commercial vehicle partnership known as the Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies (CJPT), the automaker said in a statement.

Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito criticised Daihatsu for the act, “It fundamentally undermines the credibility of type certificates and damages trust in Japan’s manufacturing industry.”

The Ministry issued a correction order to Daihatsu under the Road Transport Vehicle Law. The order requires the company to compile and report on measures to prevent a recurrence, such as eliminating its corporate culture that suppresses employees from expressing opinions to superiors.

Okudaira had a long career at Toyota spanning nearly four decades from 1979 before he became President of Daihatsu in 2017, a year after it became a Toyota subsidiary. Daihatsu Chairman Sunao Matsubayashi will also step down and will not be replaced, Toyota said.

Last April, the company had been falsifying crash-test results for four of its models, involving 88,000 vehicles made in Thailand and Malaysia in 2022 and 2023. In May 2023, it announced a production halt in Japan for two hybrid models because of similar “irregularities” including the Toyota Raize SUV.

Reports added investigation released in January 2024 found the acts included false reports on headrest impact tests and test speeds for some models.

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