Toyota Says President, Chairman of Scandal-hit Daihatsu Unit to Step Down

CORPORATE STRATEGIC - TOKYO. Toyota Motor Corp said on Tuesday both the president and chairman of small-car unit Daihatsu Motor will step down following revelations of misconduct related to rigged collision safety-tests.

Toyota's chief executive officer for the Latin America and Caribbean region Masahiro Inoue will replace Soichiro Okudaira as Daihatsu's president effective March 1, the world's top-selling automaker said in a statement.

Okudaira had a long-running career at Toyota spanning nearly four decades from 1979 before he became president of Daihatsu in 2017, a year after the compact car maker became a wholly owned Toyota subsidiary in 2016.

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Daihatsu's chairman, Sunao Matsubayashi, will also step down and not be replaced, Toyota said.

Given the misconduct over the safety test certification applications, Daihatsu also will be removed from a commercial vehicle partnership known as the Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies (CJPT), the automaker said in a separate statement.

Daihatsu's 10% equity stake in the partnership will be transferred to Toyota, the statement said.