President of fraud-hit, Daihatsu car unit to step down: Toyota

Daihatsu Leadership: Automotive maker Toyota Motor Corp announced on Tuesday that both the President and Chairman of its small-car unit Daihatsu Motor will step down following revelations of misconduct related to rigged collision safety-tests.

CEO for Toyota's 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.

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.

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 (CV) partnership known as the Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies (CJPT), the automaker said in a separate statement.

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