Suzuki Motor Corp. Chairman Osamu Suzuki will retire after leading the Japanese car manufacturer for more than 40 years and making it into a global player with an overwhelming dominance in the Indian car market, the company said Wednesday.

The 91-year-old chairman will leave the post at a shareholders' meeting slated for June and become an adviser, it said. Suzuki has served as either president, chairman or CEO since 1978.

The carmaker saw its consolidated sales expand sixfold from around 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) in fiscal 1980 to 3 trillion yen in fiscal 2006.

Suzuki played a crucial role as president when the automaker decided to team up with Maruti Udyog Ltd., then a state-run Indian carmaker, and launched joint production of the Maruti 800, a redesigned Suzuki Alto, in the world's second most populous nation in December 1983.

Suzuki eventually took the lead in forming a capital alliance with Toyota Motor Corp. in 2019 in a bid to co-develop self-driving vehicles, as the auto industry faces intensifying competition amid a once-in-a-century transformation to so-called CASE, or connected, autonomous, shared and electric mobility technologies.

He stepped down as president in 2015 at age 85, when he handed the post to his son, Toshihiro Suzuki, but remained as chairman.

==Kyodo

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