Lukasz Zawadski was born in Poland on March 30, 1980. Spending his childhood there and in Germany, he graduated high school and attended the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt, earning his bachelor’s degree in business management. He continued his studies further in Australia, obtaining an Advanced Diploma in business management and IT from Kent Institute Australia in Sydney, where he met his now-wife, Mayumi.
However, Japan beckoned once again and Lukasz and Mayumi decided to move back permanently to help with her family’s used car business. Looking to apply his global education, multilingual ability, and his own personal interest in cars toward building something of his own, his father-in-law shared his 40+ years of Japanese car industry know-how with him while Lukasz taught himself the workings of Japan’s import/export sector.
He then started Malusaka in 2017 as a side project of the family business to specialize in exporting vehicles out of Japan, but soon realized it was his calling and dedicated everything to making it a successful enterprise. He chose the name based on the first two letters from the first names of each member of his family.
Lukasz speaks English, Polish, German, and Japanese. He loves snowboarding in the winter and is an avid motorsport enthusiast who enjoys driving on four wheels or riding on two, whether it’s through Japan’s mountain touge, off-roading, or hitting the track to chase laptimes.
How did he fall in love with cars?
“I had a Skoda 105 in high school that my parents bought for me as my first car and a friend convinced me to enter an amateur rally once and we did pretty well for having a garbage car, but I never actually fell in love with cars until we came to Japan. I had a 4-door Skyline R34 back in 2005 and I took it to iroha-zaka in Tochigi Prefecture and it just blew my mind how much fun it was to drive up there. That’s really what set the match off for me.”