More Non-Malays Buying Perodua Cars TEAMCAR - For the first time in 12 years, the demographic profile of Perodua buyers has seen a 50:50 split between Malays and non-Malays as the number of non-Malay purchasers has shot up in the Jan-June 2006 period, and this is primarily due to the popularity of the Myvi.

"It's almost equal now. We used to have a 60:40 ratio (biased towards the Malays)," said Perodua (Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd (Perodua) managing director Syed Hafiz Syed Abu Bakar.

Orders of Myvi, which comes in 1.0 and 1.3 litre variants, reached 105,000 units since its launch in May last year.The compact car chalked up a record month of 14,800 units in March this year but this was broken with a new high of 15,200 units in May and this was again repeated at 15,200 units in June.

"So far this year our (sales) volume has been very high," Syed Hafiz told Bernama.Up to June this year, the second national car manufacturer has delivered about 74,000 Myvis.

Perodua aims to raise total sales by 12 per cent to 155,000 vehicles this year from 138,466 cars in 2005, with some 45 percent of it contributed by the Myvi.

This is despite Perodua's projection of a total industry volume (TIV) for 2006 to be about the same as the 551,045 units recorded in 2005.  ¶ 6:13 PM