The Perodua Nautica CBU Launched |
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Sunday, 13 July 2008 |
Perodua recently launched the new SUV Nautica. It has been 15 years since Perodua started in the local automotive business and with this launch, they are to make a major new revamp in their product lines. This would be the first model that Perodua would not be producing in Malaysia. instead they have opted to imported directly from Japan. The CBU (Complete Built Unit) move is seen by many as going against the national car makers’ original direction.
From Perodua’s point of view however, they were fast to defend that move, stating that instead of using the ‘national’ word in their branding has used a ‘new compact SUV’ instead. Apparently it was a wise financial move for the second national car maker. While the SUV segment no longer seemed as lucrative as it was when the Kembara first hit the roads, their cost benefit shows that the demand might not be able to justify the investment in building the car in the country.
As more and more consumers tend to opt for the bigger MPVs instead of SUVs, they would not want to fall into the losing end if they are to produce locally. The best selling SUV in the market is currently held by Honda with their CR-V of which they only managed to roll out slightly less than 450 units per month last year. Therefore, Perodua projects that they will be moving out about 200 units per months.
As the Managing Director of Perodua, Datuk Syed Abdull Hafiz bin Syed Abu Bakar points out, in times like this, it is not so much about the direction but they have to bring into consideration the return on investment as well. what more with more entry level cars being made available by international car makers entering the market, competition is seen at its highest. If they are not careful at the start, there might be no end. He said that We should not be so hung up on national pride and be forced into doing things which do not make business sense. We will still make high-volume models with high quality and offer them at affordable prices and we will also continue to bring in new technology. Such technology is not just in engines but also in manufacturing and an example is how we have used the latest manufacturing processes to push the defect rate per unit down to 0.2, which is a very big improvement from the time we started.”
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