The real reasons why last week’s Autoshow was ignored are shared below
Did you attend the Malaysia Autoshow 2025 at MEAPS Serdang last week? Were you impressed with the lineup of vehicles and motorcycles? Did the various participating brands wow you with shiny new metal?
Malaysians love to visit exhibitions and shows, whether they are buying, window shopping for the future or just browsing and these show/exhibition organizers ONLY NEED to get one or two crowd pulling ‘hero items’ to get mass attention.
We have seen how the home renovation exhibition, baby expo, property exhibition and even better is anything with the word ‘EV’ (electric vehicle) in its title makes for a great crowd attraction right now in Klang Valley.
Even automotive content websites have EV auto shows with just 1 or 2 EV models being used as bait and the rest just bringing and showing dated and discounted petrol powered models to try and convince ‘less informed’ Malaysians that they need to take a 7-year loan to buy a dated model.
This is business …… big business and it continues to attract enough simple minded Malaysians to part with their hard-earned money and get into high debt with a new car loan.
So, last week our ‘famous for the wrong reasons’ Malaysian Automotive Institute (MARii) (known previous years for its corrupt and MACC charged former leader) organized the Malaysian Autoshow 2025 at MEAPS where it was shared with us by many brand executives that the organization ‘persuaded’ Malaysian auto manufacturers to participate at high entrance/exhibition fees.
Many well known car manufacturers declined to participate at their MAEPS (Serdang) event as the previous shows were NOT well organized and were sub-standard (frequent power failures and issues with toilets) in terms of prestige, however, because this organization ‘evaluates’ and ‘signs-off’ on much needed tax incentives on newly launched vehicles, most car manufacturers are forced to participate and the added costs they incur in one way or another is transferred to Malaysian car buyers.
Malaysians want to attend auto shows to see luxury, desirable and exotic cars as well as cars they can afford, but not cars already being sold in showrooms for a year or more …… yes?
So, we were NOT surprised that Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Porsche, McLaren, Lamborghini, Maserati, Jaguar, Land Rover, Peugeot, Leapmotor, Volvo, Hyundai, ISUZU, FORD, JAC, Lotus Cars, Denza and even Honda were NOT at the show.
Meanwhile, thanks to the new Chinese automotive brands like Zeekr, AION, WULING, MG, GREAT WALL Motor (GWM) i-CAUR, Jetour, Chery and Jaecoo, the show was a success.
Plus, our Perodua and Proton made the headlines with their brand new sub-100k electric cars to attract middle class Malaysians to the show.
