The Perodua Bezza has overtaken the Perodua Myvi – for the first time – as the brand's best seller, helping the Rawang outfit record a total sales volume of 144,690 vehicles in the first half of 2023 (H1 2023). This alone is 13.6% better than the number of registrations in the same period last year (127,343).

The Bezza ranked as Perodua's top seller so far this year with a total of 40,555 units sold between January and June this year, edging the Myvi's 32,319 units and Axia's 28,199 cars. Meaning the Bezza is also Malaysia's best selling car - its nearest rival, the Proton Saga, mustered 33,325 units sold in the same period.

This comes off the back of heightened production for the carmaker, in which they produced 153,813 vehicles in the first six months of this year; an increase of 17% compared with 131,641 cars at the same juncture of 2022.

“The higher production and sales performances for the first half of 2023 were due to better supply of parts as well as improved production efficiency at our manufacturing plant,” Perodua President and Chief Executive Officer, Dato’ Sri Zainal Abidin Ahmad said.

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Dato’ Sri Zainal said the bulk of the production performance of this year so far was achieved in the first quarter of 2023 as Perodua went all out to meet its PENJANA obligations.

He continued that Perodua is on track to meet its 330,000 production and 314,000 registration targets as the compact car company will further improve on its operational efficiencies. Among the achievements is shortening the time it takes to produce a vehicle (tact time) from 1.35 minutes to just 1.25 minutes at the Perodua Global Manufacturing plant (PGSMB).

The PGMSB plant in Rawang makes the Axia, Ativa, and Bezza. The second plant in Rawang, Perodua Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd. (PMSB) makes the Alza, Aruz, and Myvi, as well as contract manufacturing the Toyota Rush and Veloz.

“Looking ahead, we expect both production and sales to continue their uptrend as demand for our vehicles remain healthy,” Dato’ Sri Zainal said. For example, our recently launched Axia E was well received and our ready stock of 2,500 vehicles were completely distributed within 48 hours,” he said.

Dato’ Sri Zainal said while existing bookings were encouraging, there are potential challenges ahead, ranging from potential higher financing costs and intermittent supply shortages. “These challenges notwithstanding, we stand firm on our targets, and we thank our valued customers for their support and patience. Our top priority is to continue reducing our customers’ waiting time as well as further improve our service quality,” he said.

“We also thank Bank Negara Malaysia for keeping the overnight policy rate steady at 3% as this would help to ease financing cost of our customers, who consist of lower income earners,” Dato’ Sri Zainal said.

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