Suzuki chairman who over half a century grew the company into one of the world’s largest car and motorcycle manufacturers

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.