Official - Cancellation of plan to market the Brio in Malaysia

Honda Malaysia officially confirmed the cancellation of plans to market the Honda Brio K-car in Malaysia. This was made in a response to a question about this matter made by me during the press conference of the 4G Honda City launch. 

There was no direct reason given for the cancellation but rather a reference was made to the fact that Malaysian national car makers Perodua and Proton both have offerings in this sector. 

Further explanations also highlighted the potential for large sales figures of 100,000 or more units if the Brio is to be sold in Malaysia and while this should logically be good news for Honda Malaysia's ambitious 70,000+ quota for this year, a concern was also voiced about Honda's current (in)ability to provide satisfactory after sales support for such a large number.

So for Honda fans looking forward to this car in Malaysia will unfortunately be disappointed. No comments were made if this cancellation is for good or whether Honda will re-look into this matter again in the future.

News of Brio-based MPV shared by Indian car blog

Mr Shrawan Raja, managing editor of http;//indianautosblog.com wrote to our Jeff Palmer to share some interesting news of a future Honda Brio-based MPV that will be launched for the Asian market. Mr Shrawan wrote ;

I'm writing to inform you that Honda is working on an MPV for the emerging market based on the Brio platform. As you may know, the Brio is a car smaller than the Jazz for Asian markets. A sedan on the same platform, dubbed Brio Amaze, has been launched in Thailand and India and is following suit to other such high-growth countries.

The third derivative on this platform, a small family MPV with three rows of seats is also on the anvil. Honda has confirmed that it will make this MPV in Indonesia next year and feasibility studies for this product is being carried out in places like India and Thailand. Its main competitors would be the Suzuki Ertiga and the Toyota Avanza.
 
The full article is at http://indianautosblog.com/2013/05/honda-brio-mpv-rendering-75986.

Our thanks to Mr Shrawan for sharing this information with us. 

New Honda Brio sedan

Honda has put up a teaser page for a 'new sedan' in their HAT, Honda Automobile Thailand, website. This new sedan is recognizable as being based on the new mini-car 'Brio'. 

The only info so far for this new sedan is that it will be using a 1.2l engine, probably based on the LSeries. To watch the teaser video click the following link http://www.honda.co.th/new-sedan/. 

This follows the mid-year speech from Honda CEO Ito-san about the Brio's future here in Asia:

In Asia, in order to compete in and win in highly-competitive low-price markets and fulfill the diverse needs of customers, in addition to the all-new Fit Series, Honda will add sedan-type and utility-type models utilizing the platform of the BRIO, Honda's strategic model for Asia.