UMW Toyota Motor (UMWT) began accepting orders for the imported (CBU), Japan-made AH40 generation 2023 Toyota Alphard and Vellfire models on July 3, one month after the pair’s global debut in Japan. Despite its rather high price of RM 538,000 and RM 438,000 respectively, the reception was tremendous, with the number of orders quickly exceeding the initial allocation of several hundred units for Malaysia.

Officially, UMWT said the waiting period is now “more than 1 year.” Checks with local Toyota dealers, however, revealed that the actual waiting period is closer to 2 years.

The surge in demand is driven by two main factors. Firstly, there are no cheaper parallel imported options currently available. UMWT opened bookings just a month after these models were launched in Japan. Regulations stipulate that parallel importers can only ship their cars 12 months after the model is launched, meaning June 2024 is the earliest available timing for recond dealers.

Secondly, the powertrain options of the officially imported UMWT models appear to be more attractive than forthcoming parallel imported Japanese market models.

For the first time ever, the powertrain options for export models are reversed compared to those for Japan's domestic market models. Even the model hierarchy is reversed. In Japan, the cheaper Alphard is only available with either a 2.5-litre naturally aspirated 4-cylinder or a hybrid of the same capacity.

Meanwhile, the Vellfire is much more expensive, priced 20 percent higher than the Alphard, and is powered by either a 2.4-litre turbocharged engine or a 2.5-litre hybrid.

In Malaysia, the hierarchy of UMWT’s officially imported models is reversed. The sportier Vellfire is cheaper, at RM 438,000, with a 2.5-litre naturally aspirated engine (2AR-FE, 182 PS / 235 Nm) paired to a CVT-type automatic transmission. The more expensive RM 538,000 Alphard benefits from a 2.4-litre turbocharged engine (T24A-FTS, 278 PS / 430 Nm) that will not be available on recond models from Japan.

Over in Japan, orders for the Toyota Alphard and Toyota Vellfire remain suspended, due to overwhelming demand. The waiting list in Japan has since swelled past 2 years. Customers are willing to pay over the sticker price for a barely used example. To overcome this, Toyota dealers in Japan are diverting customers looking for an Alphard or a Vellfire to their Kinto leasing program, which has a shorter 6 to 9 months waiting period.

In Korea, there’s a similarly long waiting period for the Alphard, which caught the company by surprise because Toyota is just a small player in a market dominated by Hyundai and Kia. Toyota Korea netted over 500 orders for the Alphard within just 2 weeks of its launch.

The reason? The Alphard is the only hybrid model in its segment. Despite the Korean government’s push for EVs, Korean car buyers are gravitating towards hybrids, a forte of Toyota.