CKD Volkswagen Passat Launched by Malaysian Prime Minister

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Pekan, 11 March, 2012 – It is here at last – the locally assembled Volkswagen Passat was unveiled today by the Malaysian Prime Minister YAB Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak in the royal town of Pekan, Pahang, at the DRB-Hicom plant. This historical moment represents the first fruits of the collaboration between our local automotive conglomerate and the Volkswagen Group, which began with discussions that resulted in the auspicious signing ceremony held at the end of 2010. 

Present at the unveiling were the top management of DRB-Hicom, including Dato' Syed Mohamad Syed Murtaza, Chairman of DRB-Hicom, Dato Sri Haji Mohd Khamil Jamil, Group Managing Director, DRB-Hicom, and top management from Volkswagen, Dr. Christof Spathelf, Senior Vice President, Group Manufacturing Overseas and Mr. Soh Wei Ming, member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen, and Head of Commercial Operations, China/Asean. Also present was Mr. Ricky Tay, Managing Director, Volkswagen Group Malaysia.

According to a follow up release, the Volkswagen Passat is priced at RM170, 888, and will be available for sale at all the 18 Volkswagen outlets nationwide. The release also stated that the Passat will have other variants, and the price will range from RM169,888 to RM184,888, according to specification and trim levels. We understand that some 300 units are already assembled, and ready for delivery.

According to Dato Sri Khamil, this collaboration with Volkswagen will eventually boost the production volume at the Pekan plant from its current 23,000 units a year to 50,000 units when the full complement of the planned local assembly is activated. Although at this time, Dato’ Sri Khamil did not specify what models are to be assembled, we do recall a year ago during the initial signing ceremony between DRB Hicom and Volkswagen that the Polo sedan and the Jetta are the planned models. 

Immediately after the launch, some members of the media who attended the ceremony were given a first-hand taste of the locally assembled Passat in the form of a 300 kilometre drive from the Pekan plant to the Glenmarie golf and Country Club in Shah Alam. Having seen and driven the CBU Passat not too long ago, we found the locally assembled Passat to be just as good. The parts for these first 300 units come as a total package from the Volkswagen Group – there is a target of 40 percent local content, and according to Dr. Spathelf, the local content will be introduced in stages, and all local content parts must meet the quality standards of Volkswagen before they can be accepted. 

The test of the local assembly would be in the fit and finish, the door gaps and trim integrity – our first impression of the test units, and there were twenty of them on the road today, is that the local units are indeed as good as the imported units.