Domestic sales continue to grow

Geely’s research and development centres and plants are located in Shanghai ( China), Gothenburg ( Sweden), Coventry ( the UK), Barcelona (Spain), and Los Angeles (the US).

Proton’sdomesticsales,meanwhile, continued to maintain steady growth in its performance year-to-date.

As at Nov 30, 2017, it achieved 66,190 units in sales, a growth of two per cent compared with 65,069 in the same period last year, driven by its Saga and Persona models.

Saga and Persona continued to lead all of the Proton models with 28,368 and 18,113 units sold respectively year-to-date, making up for 70 per cent of the company’s total car sales.

Proton Edar CEO Abdul Rashid Musa said it has been a challenging journey for the company for the past five years and the steady growth recorded from January-November 2017 was a positive achievement for Proton.

“Growth was driven by ongoing internal quality improvement measures. We can see the sign, we are rebounding to gain public confidence.

“Progress has been positive since Proton already owned good and durable products. We shall keep working on further improvements in our cars and we look forward to also do better in providing customer satisfaction,” he said.

Proton recently highlighted the reliability and durability of its cars which were tested in a gruelling ninehour endurance race at the ‘Sepang 1,000 km 2017’ where Team Proton R3 emerged the overall winner.

For 2018, Rashid said Proton is expected to grow in tandem or better than the average total industry volume (TIV) growth.

The Malaysian Automotive Association expects a minimal TIV growth of 1.7 per cent to 590,000 for 2017 and five per cent TIV growth for 2018 to 619,500 units in anticipation of an economic recovery.

For Perodua, the company is scaling another phase in its transformation programme announced back in 2011, that was to facilitate further improvement of its product lineup,

he company steps up its transformation for increased competitiveness with the launch of the all-new ‘Myvi’ in November.

It set a new benchmark for the sub-compact class by incorporating features that are normally found in higher- priced cars, whilst not increasing prices substantially.

Perodua Sales Sdn Bhd Managing Director Datuk Dr Zahari Husin said, the new Myvi would join the stable of Perodua’s Energy Efficient Vehicles (EEVs) models, alongside its bestselling five-door hatchback ‘Axia’ and its first-ever sedan ‘Bezza’, that meet the government’s definition of an EEV under the latest NAP.

“EEV, value deal and affordability would be the theme for 2018.

“Next year, we are quite positive to register another growth, higher than our 2017’s sales,” said Zahari, who was named the ‘Automotive Man of the Year’ during the Malaysia Car of the Year Awards 2017.

Zahari said the company was on track to achieve its sales target of 202,000 units this year despite the continuous challenging economic environment, and hinted to at least another single digit sales growth achievable for 2018. — Bernama