The man behind Suzuki’s extraordinary South African success

Teruo Katakawa, Managing Director (MD) of Suzuki Auto South Africa, has been key to the Japanese automaker’s rapid ascension to stardom in the domestic market.

Katakawa holds quite an impressive resume within the Suzuki company umbrella, but public details about his life are limited before this.

His social profiles reveal that the MD attended Shizuoka Prefectural Shimada High School in his younger years, after which he went to Chuo University from 1981 to 1985 before starting his tenure at Suzuki.

He first joined Suzuki Motor Corporation Japan immediately after graduating from university in 1985 where he was employed in the domestic sales planning division, and assisting with motor shows and event promotion.

He was later promoted to the product marketing side, where he stayed until 1992 when he became the assistant manager of product planning for overseas markets.

Katakawa remained in this role for another five years until it was time for him to spread his wings outside of Japan.

Come 1997, he headed to Europe and became the assistant manager of the automobile marketing wing for the European Suzuki subsidiary.

In only two years he’d make another leap, this time to the sales division of Magyar Suzuki Corporation in Hungary.

It was time to take on a new challenge, and in 2002, Suzuki made its rising star responsible for the overseas PR and promotion of its Junior World Rally Championship project.

However, it seemed the bug for sales and marketing bit again, as in 2005, Katakawa returned to his home country to become the sales manager in charge of the major cities of Hokkaido, Tokyo, Saitama, and Yamanashi.

The busy Katakawa spent five summers in this role until another opportunity for advancement came around, which saw him become the manager of automobile advertising and sales promotion for the Japanese domestic market in 2010.

It wouldn’t last long, though, as a year thereafter he packed his bags for Hungary once again, and arrived in the Central European nation as the director of sales marketing.

He made the move to director of vehicle sales at Suzuki International Europe, stationed in Germany, in 2014, before becoming president of Suzuki Austria in 2015.

Home called again, and the ambitious businessman flew back to Japan in 2018 to become manager of Suzuki Motor Corporation, which would be his last move before he touched down on the southern tip of Africa.

On 1 April 2022, Katakawa was appointed as the MD of Suzuki South Africa, where he still is to this day. Looking at his track record, though, he may not be around for much longer.

C-Suite candidates are often shuffled around from one country to the next to test their mettle before they are awarded the keys to the high-rise corner office.

Katakawa seems to have been identified as a prime contender for one of the top jobs at Suzuki with his numerous moves across the globe over his past 40-odd years with the same company.

With that in mind, we might just see the current Suzuki South Africa MD pack his bags one last time in the near future, travel back to the headquarters in Japan, and take over the helm.

A wild ride

Under the guidance of Katakawa, and his predecessor Yukio Sato, Suzuki has gone from strength to strength in South Africa.

The nameplate only entered our borders in 2008 and initially experienced a slow start owing to its unfamiliarity and a general indifference (at best) towards cars of Asian descent from local consumers at the time.

It catered to hatchback and SUV buyers but didn’t really make much of an impact for the first decade; until 2017 rolled around.

At this point, affordability was already a major concern in the auto industry while the reputation of Asian cars was on the rise owing to improving build quality and impressive spec sheets when compared to their European and American rivals, all the while staying competitively priced.

Suzuki was one of the benefactors of this market shift, selling a decent 8,833 vehicles in 2017 which put it ahead of well-established automakers such as Isuzu at the time.

Since then, the manufacturer has been collecting more and more trophies on its rise to the top.

By building and importing the majority of its vehicles from India, Suzuki kept production costs and thus selling prices low in key regions such as South Africa, and focusing on the mass market with a wide range of crossovers, hatchbacks, and MPVs kept it within reach of a large portion of the population.

It also had some clever tactics to get tongues wagging.

For example, it set a Guinness World Record in 2023 with the Suzuki Safari Town Festival in Clarens, Free State, created clever products like the Eeco Vanlife Concept, and did things such as post a Jimny bakkie as an April Fool’s joke, which based on local customer feedback, may not be a joke forever.

Since 2017, the company has broken its South African sales record 25 times, having first eclipsed 1,000 in a month in August 2017.

The next milestone came in October 2020 when it shot past 2,000 sales, which was followed by 3,000 in September 2021, and 4,000 in May 2022 – one month after Katakawa joined the family.

In 2023, the manufacturer boasted an average of 4,131 registrations a month and welcomed its 200,000th South African customer.

Come January 2024, it soared to a new high of 5,235 monthly transactions; in April, it announced that it had broken through the 50,000-sales-per-year barrier for the very first time; and in November, it improved its monthly best yet again with 6,004 sales.

The first month of 2025 was even more impressive, with Suzuki setting four new records in one go.

It sold 6,399 vehicles over the 31 days, its best to date, and also saw new highs in terms of dealer and fleet/rental/government sales.

Finally, its swanky new Swift became the best-selling car in the country, beating out the evergreen Toyota Hilux by 71 registrations.

The success his forebear created, Katakawa accelerated. Should he be able to continue this winning streak, we may just see Suzuki battling it out with Toyota for the top spot on the sales charts in the near future.