Eiji Toyoda, who died Tuesday in Aichi Prefecture, spearheaded Toyota Motor Corp.'s expansion in the U.S. as the automaker's longest-serving president.
Toyoda pushed his company to learn from Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. about mass production of automobiles.
During his 57-year career, the younger cousin of Toyota's founder helped reshape a maker of Chevrolet knockoffs into an automaker whose manufacturing efficiency later became the envy of GM and Ford.