Kiichiro Toyoda

Biography

Kiichiro Toyoda was born on 11 June 1894 in Yoshitsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, and graduated in mechanical engineering from Tokyo Imperial University in 1920. In 1926 the loom maker now known as Toyota Industries Corporation was set up and he became its managing director.

In 1933 a car department was created inside the company. Toyoda bought a DeSoto Airflow, took it apart and used it as the basis for the A1 prototype, completed in May 1935. It was reworked into the AA saloon, Toyota's first production passenger car: 1,404 were built between 1936 and 1943.

Toyota Motor Co. became independent in 1937 with Kiichiro as vice-president, and he became president in 1941. From 1947 the occupation authorities allowed up to 300 small passenger cars a year, and that October the SA 'Toyopet' appeared. Strikes and falling sales during the 1949 recession led him to resign on 5 June 1950. He died on 27 March 1952, aged 57.