As the car company\u2019s president, he made decisions quickly and shook things up, expanding overseas manufacturing and introducing the Prius, a milestone in automotive history.<\/p>\n
Hiroshi Okuda, a hard-charging Toyota executive who revived the floundering automobile maker in the 1990s by expanding production overseas, tightening decision-making at home and pushing through the introduction of the Prius, the world\u2019s first hybrid car in regular production, died on Aug. 8. He was 93.<\/p>\n
The Toyota Motor Corporation, where he had worked since 1955, confirmed the death, but did not provide a location.<\/p>\n
When Mr. Okuda took over Toyota\u2019s presidency in 1995, he was the first executive outside the founding Toyoda family to lead the company in almost three decades.<\/p>\n
But he was an obvious choice: He had spent his entire career at the company, starting in the accounting department and rising to hold a variety of foreign posts that gave him deep insight into the financial and operational details of what was then the world\u2019s third-largest car manufacturer.<\/p>\n
Toyota was a behemoth, but it was slipping. Thanks in part to a strong yen, which hurt exports, and a conservative corporate culture, it had been steadily losing domestic and international market share. In 1995, for the first time in many years, it fell below 40 percent of car sales in Japan.<\/p>\n
Mr. Okuda\u2019s predecessor, Tatsuro Toyoda, the son of the company\u2019s founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, seemed to embody the stagnation. Seriously ill and bedridden for months, he was said to be issuing orders to his brother, Shoichiro, through telepathy.<\/p>\n
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