In April, Automotive News featured a special interview with Chairman Akio Toyoda. He spoke about the Toyota DNA passed down from his great-grandfather Sakichi, the hardships faced during his presidency, and his thoughts on the next generation.
Sakichi Toyoda motivated to solve problems, help others
When Sakichi was a young man, modern Japan was still waking up to the outside world from its samurai era. The long-isolated island nation seemed under siege from the newfangled technologies and commercial might of Western powers. Sakichi was just a humble carpenter’s son with only a grade-school education. Yet as Sakichi looked around, he felt compelled to help his country.
Akio Toyoda takes a certain pride in saying Sakichi discovered he could contribute to society by easing the workloads of others. It started with his mother, who helped out in carpentry and in the fields before coming home to weave at night.
“He wanted to make his mother’s life much easier,” Toyoda said. “So, Sakichi’s thinking in this way was probably the very source of how Toyota began.”
Sakichi’s itch to solve problems inspired his invention of the Type G, the world’s first automatic weaving machine with a nonstop shuttle changing mechanism.
The innovative design not only relieved the burden on workers, it also achieved a multifold improvement in efficiency.
Toyoda said the same mindset guides Toyota Motor Corp. The spirit is also a reason Automotive News celebrates the Toyoda family with a Centennial Award.
The 2025 tribute commemorates Automotive News’ 100th year as an advocate and critic for the auto industry. And it honors a select group of extraordinary individuals and families whose vision, innovation and leadership made a lasting impact on the world’s most exciting business.
Toyoda family led with name, not with shareholdings
Three generations followed Sakichi to lead the Toyota dynasty. Akio’s grandfather Kiichiro founded the carmaker in 1937 as a spinoff of Sakichi’s Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. Akio’s father, Shoichiro, was president of the automaker from 1981 to 1992, then chairman from 1992 to 1999. Akio took over as president in 2009 and has been chairman since 2023.
Other kin taking turns at the helm have been Sakichi’s cousin Eiji Toyoda, president from 1967 to 1981, and Shoichiro’s younger brother Tatsuro Toyoda, who led from 1992 to 1995.
Today, the cars churned out by Toyota are sold in virtually every corner of the world. The brand is a byword for quality and reliability. The business practices pioneered by successive generations of Toyoda family leaders rewrote the book on manufacturing, introducing concepts such as lean production and kaizen (continuous improvement). And nearly 90 years after the carmaker’s founding, Toyota stands tall as the world’s biggest automaker and one of its most profitable.
Around the globe, Toyota employs hundreds of thousands of people, while many times that number can credit their jobs to its sprawling empire of suppliers, dealers and affiliates.
Being the carmaker’s third-generation leader weighs heavily on Akio, the 68-year-old patriarch. “In Japan, it is often said the third generation will either further develop the company or bankrupt it,” he said. “I am not a capital investor or contributor in terms of capital to this company. There were people inside of the organization who weren’t happy to see me at the top.”