Signs That A New Perodua SUV Is On The Way

The Perodua Full Year Review event which took place today mainly informed us how they sold a record 240,341 number of vehicles in 2019 and that they had surpassed their sales record of 227,243 units sold from 2018. 

What everyone wanted to hear at the event though was what vehicle Perodua would be releasing next? Disappointingly no official answers were given. However, if we were to read between the lines of what was presented today, we have an educated guess. Read on... 

The first hint was that Perodua's market research further cemented that the SUV market is where the money's at. Secondly, they also looked into world automotive trends, and from there Perodua concluded that small turbocharged engines are the way forward. 

They also presented that this year, they will be investing close to RM500mil into one of their factory lines. We can safely assume that this isn't just a maintenance exercise but more of preparation for a completely new model.

This is especially so when Perodua President and CEO Dato' Zainal Abidin Ahmad stated during a Q&A session that Perodua has the capacity to introduce a facelift and new model each year. They already launched a facelifted model this year (Bezza), so that only leaves us a new model for 2020.  

The most significant hint was what was on in one of the presentation slides. It showed that after 2019, Perodua would start working on cars built on the DNGA platform.

The DNGA (Daihatsu New Global Architecture) platform is Daihatsu's newest platform. The much loved Daihatsu Rocky was built on that platform, and it comes with a small turbocharged engine. With the SUV market contributing to 24.4% of car sales for the first half of 2019 according to MAA, we're sure that Perodua wants a bigger piece of the pie.

They can't solely depend on the Aruz to lead the charge. The writing is on the wall, and we are pretty confident that at some point in the near future, a new Perodua SUV will be joining the already crowded SUV market.