2024 Malaysia car sales data by brand vs 2023 – take a look at last year’s biggest winners and losers

Malaysia is flying, as far as auto sales is concerned. We’re a smaller country than Thailand, but our vehicle sales overtook the ‘Detroit of the East’ in 2023, and the narrow margin became huge in 2024. In fact, Malaysia’s record total industry volume (TIV) of 816,747 units last year came very close to Indonesia’s, and that’s a country of nearly 300 million people. We love our cars all right.

It’s not a fluke either. TIV breached the 800k mark for the first time in 2024, but the previous record of 799,821 units was created in the preceding year, so there’s momentum. The record was primarily driven by passenger cars too, which went up 3.9% year-on-year – a steep 13.8% drop in commercial vehicles meant that overall TIV increased by ‘just’ 2.1%.

So, with such rosy headlines figures, we can summarise that it has been a fantastic year for car brands in Malaysia. Except that we can’t, because that’s not exactly the case – see the overall league table we compiled below from Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) data and you’ll see more red than green. The growth is certainly not across the board.

You’ll never hear them even whisper it, but 2024’s record TIV was delivered by Perodua. Had the market leader not outperform its initial target for last year (to maintain the level of 2023, which was 330,325 units) by a whopping 27,777 units (for 358,102, +8.4%) we’d have no new record.

It has to be noted that quiet achievers in Rawang did this without any new model launches (or indeed any public activity before KLIMS) in 2024 – for P2’s most-recent launch, you’ll have to go back to February 2023 for the current-generation Axia, if you don’t count the returning Axia E ‘Rahmah’ from June 2023.

Similarly, P2 is propping up the share of national makes, which at 61.9% of TIV (67.7% of passenger vehicles) is a very high point in recent history. That’s because compatriot Proton saw its first dip in sales since 2018. According to MAA figures, P1 sold 147,587 units in 2024, which is 2.2% lower than in 2023. Why doesn’t this match with the 152,352 figure released by Proton? They typically include exports in published figures.

Of late, Proton has been leaning on its SUVs for sales, moving away from the lower end of the price scale and competing directly with non-national makes in the RM100k to RM150k space.

That space has long been the preserve of Japanese heavyweights Toyota and Honda. Despite a slight drop (-5.2% to 100,701), the Big T maintained a healthy lead over fourth placed Honda, thanks to the former’s popular commercial vehicles. If you take out trucks and vans (which Honda doesn’t sell), the maker of the Civic maintained its position as the top non-national passenger vehicle brand in Malaysia – sales went up 2.1% to 81,699.

Honda is also the only big Japanese brand that’s not in the red, which itself is a big achievement given the overall sentiment. Toyota’s 5.2% drop is tiny compared to the sharp declines of Mitsubishi (-25.6%), Mazda (-24%), Isuzu (-21.5%) and Nissan (-22.2%), perennial top 10 brands.

Speaking of the top 10, Nissan is no longer there (11th), but two Chinese brands are. Chery led the Chinese wave into Malaysia, and is still the most aggressive player from the Middle Kingdom. You’ll see that Chery is now third in the non-national league (from 13th in 2023), and its total of 19,683 units is up by a scarcely believable 338.1%.

What sorcery? The magic potion is Jaecoo and its hot-selling J7 SUV. Sales from the more upmarket brand, which operates separately with its own dealerships, have been combined with the mainstream Chery brand for a grand total, so it’s a little bit misleading, but all roads lead to Wuhu, they’ll say. Worryingly for the Japanese incumbents and Proton, the Chery Group is all in on SUVs, which means straight fights in every price bracket.

Elsewhere, Mitsubishi drops one place to sixth (fourth in N-N) despite having two big launches last year (Xpander facelift and all-new Triton). Disastrous? The range renewal came late in the year, and MMM has constantly outperformed despite selling only two models in Malaysia. Sales of lifestyle pick-up trucks have been hit by the end of blanket diesel subsidy, but with RON 95 petrol joining the list soon, we’ll see if things normalise.

It’s the opposite for electric vehicles. EV sales are on the rise in Malaysia, and the charge is being led by BYD, which breaks into the top 10 at the expense of Nissan. Sales jumped by 130% to 8,570 units. The BYD Atto 3 was Malaysia’s best-selling EV in 2024 with 2,969 units, nine units ahead of the Seal. They now have the Sealion 7 SUV and M6 budget MPV too, in addition to the Dolphin hatchback.

By the way, you don’t see Tesla in this list as it’s not a member of the MAA, but based on JPJ’s registration records, 2,824 units of the Model 3 and 2,300 units of the Model Y were registered last year, respectively. This means that the Elon Musk’s EV company wouldn’t have got into the top 10 anyway.

Over in the traditional premium segment, while BMW’s sales were down by 12.1%, it still managed to break into the top 10 in number nine, and the Munich firm’s sales of 10,527 units is well ahead of arch-rival Mercedes-Benz’s 7,114 units (-23.6%, 12th place), so it’s as good as it gets for BMW. However, both German firms must stem the flow of traditional 3 Series/C-Class buyers migrating to EVs such as the Seal and Model 3.

However, we must add that there’s a discrepancy between the numbers BMW submitted to MAA (higher) compared to JPJ registrations, which should be higher as the latter takes into account parallel imports.

Elsewhere, it’s a sea of red – MINI -22.3%, Subaru -28.5%, Volvo -29.1%, Ford -29.6%, Volkswagen -36.3% and a huge -42.9% drop for Hyundai. Among the entries that stood out are MG, which completed its first year of sales with 1,153 units, and Lotus. The 49 units shifted by the latter is a 48.5% increase from 2023’s 33 units – not bad at all considering the narrow niche (high performance EVs) Hethel now plays in. Renault sold just eight new cars in 2024!

By the way, Kia, handled by Bermaz, has stopped reporting numbers to the MAA. It was the same thing last year with Kia and Peugeot. The latter has since been handed back to Stellantis, but it looks like the principal also has the habit of keeping sales figures under wraps. EV brands smart and Xpeng aren’t MAA members.

So many players, so little pie? Next year’s league table will welcome more new names such as Zeekr, Jetour and BYD’s Denza.

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