Sime Darby Berhad today announced that it has entered into a conditional share purchase agreement with Permodalan Nasional Berhad to acquire PNB’s 61.2% stake in UMW Holdings Berhad, which not only includes their aerospace and manufacturing businesses, but also the Toyota and Perodua brands. Under the terms of the agreement, Sime Darby will purchase PNB’s 61.2% stake for a total cash consideration of RM3.57 billion or RM 5.00 per share. Once the agreement becomes unconditional, Sime Darby will b

Though the all-new front-wheel-drive (FWD) 2022 Toyota Avanza could likely be only offered in Malaysia as the more upmarket Veloz, some of our neighbours are offering both the Avanza and Veloz. Joining Indonesia and Vietnam is the Philippines as Toyota Motor Philippines has posted a teaser over the weekend. The all-new Avanza was introduced in the Philippines last month (March 2022) with four variants offered priced from PHP 813,000 to PHP 1,039,000 (~RM 66k – RM 84k). Two engines are offered fo

Proton has been ramping up its presence in Pakistan with the launching of the Saga a little more than a week ago. Even though it has only two models in its line-up with the Proton X70 completing the pair, Proton’s partner in the South Asian nation, Al-Haj Automotive aims to commence local assembly at its new plant by the third quarter of 2021. The plant, which is built on a greenfield site in Karachi, will have a planned capacity of 25,000 units a year. About USD 30 million have been invested in

The fifth-gen Nissan Serena (C27) has been on sale since 2016 in Japan and was once the best-selling MPV there. Even though it was given a facelift in 2019 and featured some interesting tech underneath, its position was usurped by the Toyota Voxy in 2020. Nissan knows the Serena is due for a full model change and after 5 years, it looks like the next-generation model will arrive in October 2021. This is according to a scoop by Best Car Web. Based on the rendering as seen in the cover photo provi

Following Perodua’s sales growth for the month of October, UMW is on another roll with its other automotive segment, UMW Toyota (UMWT) posting positive sales in the same month. According to a statement, UMWT has sold 6,468 units in October. This is a 15.4% increase from the 5,605 units that were sold in the previous month. This gives the total number of Toyota units sold in the first 10 months of 2020 to 43,807 units, which are on track to reach its revised sales target of 53,000 units for the y

A heavily camouflaged SUV has been spotted on the roads and based on what we can make of the SUV’s outline, it can’t be anything else but the 2020 Toyota Corolla Cross! When the Corolla Cross made its debut earlier in July, we also estimated that the SUV will be coming to Malaysia as a locally-assembled (CKD) unit by the end of this year or early next 2021. Looks like our predictions are spot-on now that the car has been spotted on our roads. According to our friends in Careta, the location the