Founding president, Subaru Tecnica International (STI) · 1930–2005
Ryuichiro Kuze
A Fuji Heavy Industries lifer who moved from scooter design to product planning before co-founding STI in 1988, forging its Prodrive partnership, and overseeing the 1989–90 land-speed record and Subaru's first World Rally Championship manufacturers' titles.
“The design-department lifer who built Subaru's performance division from scratch, then set a land-speed record with it before Subaru had even entered a single WRC rally.”
From scooters to sedans
Born 24 December 1930 in Tokyo. He joined Fuji Heavy Industries in 1953, initially in the design department, where he is credited with designing the Fuji Rabbit scooter and a motorcycle referred to as the "Hurricane." In 1966 he was involved in design work on the Subaru 1000.
Product planning to STI's founding presidency
Kuze became FHI's first Manager of Product Planning in 1967, later holding posts including Director of Product Planning and First Director of Parts Importing, and rose to Senior General Manager of the Vehicle Development Department. In April 1988 he co-founded Subaru Tecnica International (STI) alongside Noriyuki Koseki, serving as STI's founding president and the director in charge of Subaru vehicle development. (Hiroaki Ogawa is separately credited as a co-founder, and Kazuyuki Narita, a promotion-department manager, is credited with proposing the performance division in 1987.)
A land-speed record and the Prodrive partnership
Under Kuze, STI's first initiative was a 1989–90 attempt on the FIA World Land Endurance Record: three Legacy sedans were prepared, and car #2 — driven by longtime Subaru test driver Noriyuki Ozeki, active in the company's motorsport efforts since 1963 — covered 100,000 km at an average 223.345 km/h (138.780 mph), exceeding the prior 1986 record. Kuze then forged STI's partnership with British motorsport firm Prodrive, made through RAC Rally official Jonathan Ashman; Prodrive founder David Richards' workshop assessed the Legacy's rally potential, with technical director David Lapworth confirming its viability as a Group A car. Under Kuze's leadership, STI's first rally-prepared car, the Legacy RS RA, debuted at the 1990 Safari Rally, and the Subaru World Rally Team went on to its first win (1993 Rally New Zealand) and three consecutive manufacturers' championships (1995–1997) — reportedly the first Japanese manufacturer to achieve that.
Death, and unusually strong corroboration
Kuze died 9 March 2005 of lung cancer, at age 74; the Subaru World Rally Team reportedly wore black armbands in tribute at that year's Rally Mexico. His STI successor is not named in any source consulted. His biography is unusually well corroborated for a single figure in this corpus: an enthusiast history blog and a contemporaneous enthusiast-forum memorial thread posted two days after his death agree on every overlapping fact — his 1953 FHI hire, design-department start, STI founding presidency, and exact death date, cause, and age.