At the one hit by a security scandal Toyota– Daihatsu’s small car division’s top management resigns. Latin America boss Masahiro Inoue will replace Soichiro Okudaira (67) as head of Daihatsu on March 1, the company announced on Tuesday. Okudaira worked for the car manufacturer for almost 40 years and has been at the helm since 2017.
Chairman Sunao Matsubayashi (69) will also resign. However, Daihatsu does not want to fill his position.
Because of irregularities in security checks, the company had the Production in Japan initially suspended in December and the Delivery of all vehicle models stopped. An independent committee launched an investigation into Daihatsu after it became known in April that 88,000 small cars had tampered with side-impact safety tests. Dahaitsu admitted at the time that it had manipulated the results of accident tests on some models. The main reason for the fraud is said to have been “extreme time pressure” when developing models.
Daihatsu’s problems came to light after a whistleblower reported the fraud. A third-party audit found decades-long violations, such as: B. conducting tests on only one side of a vehicle even though both sides needed to be tested. Of the 64 affected models, most are Toyota branded.
Daihatsu announced at the end of December that the car manufacturer would compensate suppliers at a lower level for the loss of production. The company kept several options open to deal with the costs of the production halt and other fallout from the scandal, including possible bank loans. The car manufacturer is already in talks with financial institutions. Toyota announced that it would fully support its wholly owned subsidiary, including with loans that were already available to compensate dealers and suppliers.