Isuzu car history

Isuzu Motors Ltd. is a Japanese car, commercial vehicle and heavy truck manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo. In 2005, Isuzu become the world's largest producer of medium to heavy duty trucks. It has assembly and manufacturing plant in the Japanese city of Fujisawa, as well as in the prefectures Tochigi and Hokkaido. Isuzu is famous for producing commercial vehicles and diesel engines - it produced 16 million diesel engines in 2003 alone, which can be found in vehicles all over the world.

In most of Asia, Africa, and Europe, Isuzu is mostly known for trucks of various sizes, after Isuzu small automobile sales drastically plummeted and Isuzu had to drop all sales of sedans and compact cars in the late 1990s. In the United States, has stopped selling Isuzu passenger vehicles. Isuzu as a corporation has always been mainly small and medium producers of compact cars and commercial trucks medium duty and larger sizes, but markets around the world show different needs. Isuzu has a contract with Budget Truck Rental to manufacture their rental trucks. This contract is also shared with Ford, GMC, and Navistar International.

On 7 November 2006, Toyota bought 5.9% of Isuzu, making them the third largest shareholder behind Itochu and Mitsubishi Corporation.