Malaysia’s appetite for cars is just… incredible. In a country with less than 40 million inhabitants, we bought 820,752 new cars last year (another record), or 0.5% more than the 816,747 in 2024. This is the second year in a row that we have broken 800,000 and our fourth year in a row of growth after Covid-19.
December 2025 was a record month (90,716 new cars found, surpassing the previous record of 81,735 units in December 2024), while the fourth quarter of 2025 was a record quarter (241,416 units).
The Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) attributes the performance to robust economic growth (GDP +4.7% in the first three quarters of 2025), strong domestic demand, recovering exports, favorable financing (2.75% OPR since July), socio-political stability, an unemployment rate of 2.9% (an 11-year low), strong order backlogs, especially in the A-segment, the EV boom (+109%) and aggressive promotions.
Driven by the SUV mania, passenger cars rose 13% to 228,572 units in 2025, up from 201,565 units in 2024, while commercial vehicles gained contracts for the second year in a row (-11% vs. -14% in 2024) when diesel subsidies were imposed in June 2024.
In terms of production, only 747,780 vehicles were produced in Malaysia in 2025 (-5% versus the 790,347 units in 2024), demonstrating the strength of fully imported (CBU) electric vehicles, for which demand surged before the incentives expired at the end of the year.
What about the national versus non-national struggle? The national team increased by 1.1% to 511,468 units (62.3% market share, compared to 61.9% in 2024), while the non-nationals decreased by 0.6% to 309,258 units (311,058 in 2024), mainly due to a lower contribution to commercial vehicles (8% compared to 9%). MAA predicts a slower 2026 at 790,000 units, but was just as pessimistic last year when it expected 780,000 units, and look what happened.
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