Malaysia Car Price Reasonable or Not?

For those who bought foreign car like Nissan Sentra, Toyota Vios, Honda City, Toyota Altis, Honda Civic etc, they would pay higher car prices due to our high import duties on foreign cars. Besides that, they would also pay for higher petrol price sooner (Start from 1st May 2010). Do you think this is ridiculous?

Malaysia_car_price

Another situation: Let say the car price increased due to the raw materials cost increased, or it costs more to ship the parts to Malaysia for assembling but it still maintains the car price, means there will have lower quality control. Do you feel satisfy with that? I feel that most of the car company will make use of this tactic, just end user do not know!

Buying cars is probably the heaviest expense for middle class people over the long term. Most families will buy a house only once but a car may be changed every 8-10 years. This will end up buying at least 2 cars.

Unfortunately, our government has become addicted to impose high taxes on foreign cars and so lifting protection for Proton. Sadly, I don’t see any political can try to start this process to bring our car prices down to world market level. Malaysians will continue to pay unreasonably prices for cars in the future.

import_duty_tax
Why Malaysia Cars So Expensive?

For me, Malaysia car price is the highest in the world and it does not make any sense. Let’s take few example car prices from our neighbour Indonesia. The Toyota Altis sells in Indonesia for about RM46k. The same car sells in Malaysia for around RM 112k. And, the Honda Jazz sells in Indonesia is about RM36k but here is RM108k. See, we are triple more expensive than Indonesia.

In a competitive market, suppliers tend to increase productivity, reduce cost to maintain or improve margin profit. However, in a controlled market like Malaysia, consumers are always at the losing end. I do not know why!

If you compare with GDP per average income, I can see that a large proportion of Malaysian income is spent on car installment. The government just knows to protect car manufacturers’ profit, but who is to protect consumers’ pocket?

The ridiculous car price in Malaysia is an issue that is just beginning to get more attention. It is going to become a really big issue in the near future!

About David Lee

I'm not a perfect person but i deserve better. I'm not a perfect guy but i wil try my best. Knowing is not enough, you must apply. Willing is not enough, you must do. Ideas For You To Become Financial Freedom
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19 Responses to Malaysia Car Price Reasonable or Not?

  1. Ian Kree says:

    I’m not putting my political glass into this. Buying car is perhaps the biggest investment (after home; and the car’s ‘birthday’ costs more than the children’s or spouse’s birthdays). My advice: think of fundamentals when buying car. Why we need car in the first place? And think how much you can afford out of your income and from that figure, how much you want to spend on car.

    My two-cent, wait until May 1st, before making any decision to buy or to trade-in your cars. 🙂

  2. Watch Shrek says:

    I usually don’t write comments on articles, but your article encouraged me to commend your efforts. Thanks for writing up this great read, I will surely bookmark this site and check in every now and then. Cheers.

  3. Jayce says:

    Malaysia car price definitely ‘reasonable’ in the point of those getting all the profit. You know who they are.

    From my stand point. Come on, the price is totally TOO HIGH. I am still driving my old 13 years old WIRA due to this.

    By the way, Watch Shrek’s comment looks like SPAM. 😛

  4. skang2 says:

    as what i know..in malaysia,the government taxes a lot.only tax the poor..while i was in overseas for studying.i can buy BMW Z3 for only around rm40k.though it’s 2nd hand car(1999)but i compare the price in malaysia..to my surprise.it costs at least rm99k.Amazing..
    they only know how to impose taxes and say driving is not good,should walk for your health care n bla bla bla..as if we are really that stupid.sad to say that but it’s true..

  5. Samuel Teong says:

    ya, you are totally right, it is a true basically its unreasonable. For those who are graduete from college and come out finding a job, normally we need it but according to the price of it, we cant effort to pay it, it definitely protect local cars as they performing…sad

  6. SHE says:

    We can simply jump into conclusion… There are reasons why government imposes high tax on imported cars. We are living in a developing country and we are trying our best to stand on our own rather than depends on others. One of the efforts is to have our own car, we should be proud of that. Now, how many people working with Proton? How many locals able to get a job, salary.. etc… If government reduces the tax i.e. same rate like other countries, people surely will go for HONDA and etc.. forget Malaysia cars,forget Proton.. less demand, market down, many people lost jobs… degrade our potential engineers to build and invent better car in the future… Everything all make sense. JOB or CAR??? Maybe we should work harder for that reason…

  7. hc says:

    If we reduce the car tax, our government will immediately bankrupt now! (as our finance minister said, if our government are still subsidies the patrol & food, Malaysia will bankrupt at 2019)

  8. JG says:

    Well creating JOB by imposing HIGH tax on Local Citizen (whoever wish to buy local or foreign car) doesn’t make sense to me.
    It should be creating more JOB, imposing LESS tax so that local citizen have more money to create or increase the Buying Capacity.
    Now by buying a House and Car for middle income family is about 40-60 of thier gross income gone.
    Indirectly middle income degrade to poor range by inflation and need to WORK HARD some more to come back as middle income again. When we going to have peace of mind?

  9. GT says:

    I couldn’t “disagree” more that “SHE” commented. Yes, local car manufacturers created jobs to feed 120,000 Malaysian. But, they using 26 millions Malaysian’s unnecessary extra spending money to feed the 120,000 people. Is it really the right thing to do? Does it worth it? And if gov reduce tax then everyone will sure buy Honda, Toyota, that’s true, but WHY? It is because lousy quality product from our local car manufacturer. If foreign car company can survive with selling RM36K for Jazz, why our proudly local car manufacturer cannot? Come out something better or at least equally good as foreign cars. Then that will really make us proud. Proton was established on 1983. After 27 years, it still can’t survive by its’ own. How many more 27 years Malaysia gov still want to throw money to this kind of company? If you have a son, working on car business for 27 years old still can’t be independent, I think it is time to think about have some other local company that can really make us proud.

  10. KZM says:

    i do my own search and found out that car price indon n malaysia almost same..altin indon RP323.5mlln(RM114k) n altis malaysia fr above article RM112k..where did u get ur figure?

  11. KZM says:

    price singapore altis 1.6 S$80,988=RM189,407

    singapore
    http://www.oneshift.com/

  12. American in Indonesia. says:

    I agree with just about everything above, you Malaysians are paying CRAZY prices, but the prices of cars quoted above are off. The Honda Jazz is about 200,000,000 IDR or $19,000 USD or 60,000 RM.. I think in most cases you are about 30% higher than Indonesia, and about 150-200% than the US.. Still nuts.

  13. ruben...... says:

    OMG….import tax is around 300%…..F**K malaysian goverment….learn from singapore…….i would rather buy a bmw 3 series in australia then buy a proton waja in malaysia…….malaysia tax not reasonable…..

  14. jeff says:

    u can try living in singapore,japan or US.u’ll know what i’m trying to say.we are growing country need support from our people.don’t just because of lower car price then all our subsidies will be gone. what happens when the subsidies gone? our expenses will go up.2nd car value price will be down but our expenses will grow up.think about it.

  15. mcmn says:

    What are you talking about?
    If I can buy a BMW at RM 40,000.00, i definitely DO NOT MIND paying petrol at market price!
    This is better than having to fork out RM 50k – 60k on a substandard car and still have to pay for unreasonable toll and increasing petrol prices.

  16. high living cost says:

    OK, maybe we just looking into this scenario so that every one is clear about the different of malaysia and other country.

    1. Australian earn AUD 3000,
    Normal car price is AUD 20000.

    2. Malaysian earn RM 3000, But normal car price is RM 40000.

    DON’T always mention that currency convert rate. Please bear in mind that our Malaysia living cost is higher than Australia. A new 3bedroom condominium in malaysia city center is cost about RM 1 m, however it only cost AUD 300k in Gold Coast.

    * Ferrari 458 italia in australia is cost AUD 526k, but malaysia is starting from RM2m.

  17. michael says:

    Why isn’t Singapore manufacturing car would tell anyone in his right mind, Dr.M vision of forking deep into Malaysian’s citizen pocket is totally in a plain simple word “Stupidity”
    We just do not have the population to support cheap cars so why bother when other could make cheaper profitable cars for us!
    Damn Stupid!!!

  18. DreamOn says:

    We should just use our voting right to keep changing a goverment until we have a reasonable priced car in Malaysia. We should simply make it market-driven, compete on your own two feet instead of keep expecting handouts like Proton – even in 1000 years it will not change and keep producing low quality cars with high cost.

  19. Parameswara says:

    Im Agree with GT..

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