Toyota says president, chairman of scandal-hit Daihatsu unit to step down

TOKYO (Reuters) -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 (NYSE:)’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.

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.