Perodua is currently conducting an assessment to determine the impact of this issue on its cars.
Perodua President and CEO Dato’ Sri Zainal Abidin Ahmad has recently released a statement regarding the news for Daihatsu to have halted production of all its models, stemming from further investigation into the prior safety scandal that plagued the Japanese automaker earlier this year. The full statement is as follows:
Pursuant to Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd.’s (DMC) announcement today on the suspension of its models due to its “procedural irregularities”.
Perodua’s statement is issued as a response to the third-party committee’s report on the “procedural irregularities” done by DMC when conducting safety tests on vehicles for various OEMs issued earlier today.
The third-party committee report, confirmed by DMC said: “these verifications and tests confirmed that all 174 irregularities pointed out by the third-party committee satisfied the standards set by laws and regulations”.
We are doing a detailed assessment on the matter and are currently in discussion with Malaysian authorities as to the impact of this development to our vehicles.
As background, on 28th April 2023, DMC announced of “procedural irregularities” when conducting safety tests on vehicles in Japan. Following that announcement, DMC has established a third-party investigative committee consisting of lawyers and technical personnel.
We sincerely apologise to our valued customers and the general public for any alarm this announcement may bring. Our intent is to reach out and assure our valued customers.
We will share the outcome of this discussion with the public in due course.
Now for those who are a bit lost on what this statement means, it essentially points to Daihatsu potentially having rigged more than just the door trim in the crash tests that initially brought the initial safety scandal to light, with there being discovered by the committee to be the aforementioned 174 irregularities on 25 test items.
And just for those who are unfamiliar with the origin of this safety scandal meanwhile, it was previously leaked by an internal source back in April for the inside lining of the front doors in certain DNGA-based vehicles to have been improperly modified for crash tests. Said modifications was allegedly performed to prevent the part from breaking into pieces with sharp edges that could injure occupants during a side airbag deployment.
In terms of how this is pertinent to Perodua now, it is worth highlighting that the models that were determined to have these newly-revealed “procedural irregularities” is basically every model it currently has in its lineup. These include the first- and second-generation Axia, Aruz, second-generation Alza, Ativa, Myvi and Bezza.
But before jumping to any worst case scenarios, it is worth noting that the prior safety scandal related to the door panel did not affect the crashworthiness and production of the Axia (which was the primary Perodua model involved in that particular scandal). Though of course it remains to be seen if the same could be said for this round of revelations, with the Malaysian automaker currently performing its own detailed assessment on the matter and are currently in discussion with Malaysian authorities as to the impact of this development to its vehicles.
