Today’s official announcement of the 2023 Perodua Axia has raised a question or two among some industry watchers and perhaps a petrol head or two. I will mention a few because the majority of Malaysians will be well served by the four versions offered, and there is no shortage of a cheap but empty Axia E with manual transmission.
Unless you run a driving school. If so, don’t worry because the stick shift ‘driving school spec’ Axia isn’t dead, even if it won’t be present at the D74A launch next month. At today’s Outlook 2023 event, Perodua president and CEO Datuk Seri Zainal Abidin Ahmad vowed to continue manufacturing the Axia manual transmission.
“Don’t worry, we will continue to produce manual cars for driving schools, don’t worry,” he said, adding that the Axia MT is expected to be launched after Hari Raya Aidilfitri, which falls in April. “In fact, I think the driving schools will like it too – the same car, with good specs, maybe cheaper. Perodua will continue to manufacture the manual Axia,” he added.
Cheaper? It’s not easy to make a new model cheaper, especially if it sits on a new, safer and more sophisticated platform (DNGA). Could this upcoming Axia MT be a stick shift version of the discontinued Axia instead of the D74A? Zainal’s later comments may contain further hints.
“I just mentioned six or seven models, now we have six models (Axia, Bezza, Myvi, Ativa, Alza, Aruz), Axia MT is the last model. We should launch the Axia MT that we are pursuing after Hari Raya. There is some modification,” he said.
It’s not very likely that a variant with a different transmission would be classified as a separate model, which could indicate that it is the base MT car transmission, albeit a modified one. We may be reading too much into the words of the P2 boss, but Perodua has already done this.
When the Viva – a Kancil replacement model – was introduced, the bug-eyed final version of the Kancil was still sold alongside the Viva as a cheaper model to serve basic motorcycling needs. Will the upcoming Axia MT fulfill the same role today with an RRP of under RM25k (the 2019 Axia E started at RM24,090)? According to Perodua, there is demand for the bare-bones Axia MT beyond driving school use, though not as much as the more refined versions. We’ll see. For now, full details on the all-new Axia are here.
