By Matt Liew of The Level
My dream car, the Ford Mustang, was recently spotted in Malaysia. After some 50-odd years of production, Ford Motor Company had relented and finally agreed to produce a right-hand drive variant of the legendary pony car. I was really excited, and decided to check the retail price of the car in Malaysia.
Needless to say, I was devastated when I discovered that the smaller 2.3L Ecoboost version of the Mustang costs a ridiculous RM435,000.
Here’s the thing, the Ford Mustang has a five-decade long heritage of being affordable. Go look at any review about the Mustang online, and you’re more likely than not to see the phrase “affordable performance”, or something to that effect. Yet somehow, in Malaysia, the Ford Mustang costs roughly US$111,500 (US$1 = ~RM3.90 at the time of writing).
What car could you buy for around US$111,500 in America? Well, for just a little bit more, you could buy yourself something like an Audi R8 Coupe, a Jaguar XJR, or an Aston Martin Vantage Convertible. Yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous isn’t it?
Long story short, I think that the price of cars in Malaysia is too damn high.
Now, I realize I may have lost some of you here by talking about a car that isn’t common locally, so allow me to show you something absolutely rage-inducing – let’s talk Honda. Here’s a price comparison between America and Malaysia for two cars that you should be familiar with on our roads, the Honda Civic and Honda Accord sedans:
Above, you’ll see the starting prices (see: cheapest version possible) of the Honda Accord and Honda Civic in Malaysia, and below, you’ll see the price ranges for the exact same cars in America.
The lowest-spec Honda Civic and Honda Accord in America cost RM72,700 and RM86,600 after exchange rate conversion. Now, I’m not blaming the foreign companies who are trying to sell their products here. They have to deal with a little something called import duties and taxes, which, according to the Malaysian Automotive Association’s website can be up to 155% of the car’s actual value.
I wouldn’t mind our cars being as expensive as they are if we had a fully functional public transport system like our neighbors down south, Singapore – but that’s another story for another day.
Now here’s what really irks me about this whole thing: We’ve created a market environment specifically to protect our local carmakers by levying duties and taxes of up to 155% on imported cars. Honestly speaking, that’s completely acceptable, as it’s often in every country’s and government’s interest to protect local brands and businesses, as well as to encourage their citizens to #supportlocal. Our neighbors, Indonesia, do this exceedingly well – we’ll also touch on that another time.
What’s absolutely unacceptable is that somehow, despite having the market heavily tilted in their favor, one of them is still failing to be competitive locally, let alone on a global scale.
You know which one of them I’m talking about.
Having local carmakers has been a 30-year experiment for our country – funded by the rakyat’s sweet, sweet tax money – and at some point, you’ve got to start wondering when the proverbial training wheels will come off and the government will force them both to stand on their own.
It really feels like being a parent and having your 30-year old child still live at home with you, because the economy’s too bad for them to buy their own place, move out, and live on their own.
Oh, wait.
First published in FMT’s youth portal, www.TheLevel.my