VWs in Malaysia after all..,

Volkswagen has shown that its plans to assemble cars in Malaysia need not involve Proton or the national carmaker’s Tanjung Malim plant by inking a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with DRB-HICOM “to collaborate on the assembly and manufacturing of VW vehicles in Malaysia”.

The MoU was signed at Volkswagen Centre Singapore by DRB’s group MD Datuk Seri Mohd Khamil Jamil and Volkswagen’s senior vice president, group manufacturing overseas, Dr Christof Spathelf and its head of sales for China and Asean, Soh Wei Ming.

“This MoU is the culmination of intense discussions and both parties anticipate the production of the CKD models in Malaysia,” Khamil said. He added that the pact also included strengthening Volkswagen’s existing sales activities and market presence in the country. Locally assembled VWs will roll out from DRB’s Pekan plant in Pahang.

The group will also look at engaging the full participation of its component manufacturing companies, in a move to support Volkswagen’s localisation programme, in line with the National Automotive Policy, the DRB boss added.

VW to CKD three models, roll out by first quarter of 2011


Here’s more news on the Volkswagen-DRB-Hicom local assembly project. There has been lots of guessing and counter guessing in our previous post revealing the deal, but we now know that there will be THREE models assembled at DRB’s Pekan plant. Bernama also quotes Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as saying that the CKD VWs will roll out by the end of the first quarter next year (Q1, 2011).

“I’ve always been monitoring the developments involving DRB-Hicom and during my recent vacation, I took the opportunity to meet the Volkswagen officials and ask them whether they were till keen to establish cooperation with DRB-Hicom,” Najib told DRB-Hicom management and staff at a Ramadan gathering over the weekend.

“Actually, they were waiting for the indication from me whether they could sign the agreement with DRB-Hicom or not,” added our PM, who is also Member of Parliament for Pekan.

Najib revealed that Volkswagen requested for incentives from the Government to make its Malaysian operations the export base for the ASEAN region. “This needs to be studied and approved by the government,” he said.