Tokyo - Mitsubishi Motor's truck-making subsidiary Friday said its chairman resigned because the firm was slow to respond to a fatal wheel-hub defect that has resulted in massive vehicle recalls.
Takashi Usami quit Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation with immediate effect and will be replaced shortly by a Japanese official, the company said.
Mitsubishi Fuso president and chief executive officer Wilfried Porth, a DaimlerChrysler executive seconded to the company, will remain at his post.
The truck maker, owned 65 percent by the US-German auto giant, was spun off from Mitsubishi Motors in January 2003, when Usami took the chairman's post.
Usami was in charge when a wheel fell off one truck, killing a pedestrian, and apologised in a statement Friday for causing "great trouble and anxiety" regarding "the series of events related to the recalls of our company's large-sized vehicles."
In 2002, a 29-year-old woman was killed and her two sons were injured on a sidewalk after being struck by a wheel that came off a large Mitsubishi trailer truck in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
Last month, Mitsubishi Fuso recalled 1127nbsp;000 vehicles to fix a defect with front-wheel hubs, followed by a recall this week of 30nbsp;000 trucks to fix faulty wheel hubs on the rear axle.
There have been more than 50 accidents in which wheels came off Mitsubishi Fuso vehicles while in motion, according to press reports.
Mitsubishi Fuso had said only recently that such accidents occurred not as a result of any defect but because of faulty maintenance.
Usami, 63, joined Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in 1963 and moved to Mitsubishi Motors in 1970. He then developed its truck and bus business, leading Mitsubishi to become a major Japanese commercial vehicle maker. - AFP