Shoichiro Toyoda


Shoichiro Toyoda is a retired Japanese business executive who served as chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation between 1992–1999, as well as chairman of the influential Japan Business Federation beginning in May 1994 through May 1998. Under Toyoda's supervision, Toyota approved the development of the Lexus brand and the Prius hybrid.

Toyota

Son to the company founder, Toyoda, in 1952, joined his father's business at Toyota Motors. In ten years, he had risen to the position of managing director. He was promoted to senior managing director in 1967, executive vice president in 1972, and president of the Company's marketing organization in 1981.
The merger of the sales and production organizations in 1982 produced Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyoda became the new entity's first president. The disparate nature of the two distinct corporate cultures required his attention, and the extent to which the "oil and water" of these two Toyota groups were merged successfully was attributed in large part to his leadership. He served as chairman from 1992 to 1999; and he became honorary chairman in 1999.
Toyoda's leadership would be integral to the global introduction into popular culture of the Lexus brand of luxury automobiles and environmentally focused Prius engine electric hybrids.

Professional Recognition

Grandson to the founder of Toyoda Automatic Loomworks, and son to the Toyota Motors founder, Shoichiro Toyoda was born in Nagoya on February 17, 1925, to Kiichiro Toyoda and Hatako née Shinshichi Toyoda, the daughter of the Takashimaya department store chain co-founder, Iida Shinshichi. He attended the Tokyo First Middle School and First High School, and graduated from Nagoya Imperial University in 1947 with a degree in Engineering BS. He would be awarded a PhD, by Tohoku University, in 1955. At the height of the pacific theater of World War II, the Toyoda family was effected on both family business and home fronts. Shoichiro's education would be delayed by his own conscription into civil service, and his father's business warrant to manufacture trucks for the imperial Japanese Army, of which his family's firm was spared destruction in the days before the Japanese government's surrender.

Family tree