Shoichiro Toyoda, the son of Toyota Motor Corp founder and father of current chief executive Akio Toyoda, died on Tuesday of heart failure, the company said. He was 97.
Toyoda, who joined Toyota in 1952, presided over the Japanese automaker’s expansion into manufacturing in the United States, the launch of the luxury Lexus brand and the Prius hybrid, and the global recognition for pioneering a new model for quality control in manufacturing.
He died less than a month after his son, Akio Toyoda, 66, the third-generation of the founding family to run the automaker, announced that he was stepping down as president and would become chairman.
“Shoichiro Toyoda raised Toyota to become the world’s top automaker,” Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement of condolence.
Toyoda, who studied engineering as a graduate student at Tohoku University, said he never forgot his father’s reminder that “an engineer belongs on
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