In the first eight months of 2018, one in ten new cars registered in Malaysia was an SUV, and Proton and Perodua did not register a single one between them. In the same window of 2026, nearly three in ten were SUVs, and the three most-registered SUVs in the country all wear a national badge. It is all in the public registration record, and anyone can check it.
We counted it ourselves from the Road Transport Department (JPJ) new-vehicle registration files published on data.gov.my. Anyone can reproduce these figures: download the yearly file from data.gov.my, keep the rows dated January to August, and count them by the body-type field. We matched January to August in every year so that no part-year distorts the trend, because the 2026 file currently runs only to August.
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The shift, in three numbers
SUV registrations (JPJ's "jip" body type) rose from 43,293 in the first eight months of 2018 to 160,616 in the same period of 2026. That is a 271 per cent increase, in a market that grew 29 per cent overall. As a share of all new cars registered, SUVs went from 9.9 per cent to 28.3 per cent.
The two other main body types lost ground over the same window. The ordinary passenger car, JPJ's "motokar" class, still leads, but its share fell from 68.5 per cent to 57.1 per cent. The pick-up truck, once nearly as common as the SUV, more than halved as a share, from 7.4 per cent to 3.8 per cent, and fell in absolute terms too, from 32,210 to 21,465.
Who built the boom: Proton and Perodua went from zero to the top three
In the first eight months of 2018, Proton and Perodua registered zero SUVs between them. The category was led by foreign brands: the Honda CR-V (9,777), the Mazda CX-5 (6,558) and the Nissan X-Trail (4,452) were the three most-registered SUVs that period.
By the same window of 2026, the three most-registered SUVs are the Proton X50 (17,828), the Perodua Traz (14,519) and the Perodua Ativa (14,357). None of the three appears anywhere in the 2018 registration file, because none had launched yet. Together, Proton and Perodua accounted for 68,938 SUV registrations, or 42.9 per cent of the category. A category that carried no national badge in early 2018 is now led by two.
The full record, year by year (January to August each year)
| Year | Total new cars | SUVs | SUV share | Proton + Perodua SUVs | Pick-ups | Pick-up share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 437,938 | 43,293 | 9.9% | 0 | 32,210 | 7.4% |
| 2019 | 405,621 | 73,137 | 18.0% | 38,749 | 23,059 | 5.7% |
| 2020 | 303,126 | 46,401 | 15.3% | 23,814 | 19,278 | 6.4% |
| 2021 | 285,833 | 67,802 | 23.7% | 45,592 | 20,679 | 7.2% |
| 2022 | 467,717 | 122,204 | 26.1% | 71,141 | 36,035 | 7.7% |
| 2023 | 526,450 | 120,520 | 22.9% | 67,426 | 37,737 | 7.2% |
| 2024 | 563,892 | 117,883 | 20.9% | 56,197 | 31,550 | 5.6% |
| 2025 | 551,365 | 136,529 | 24.8% | 60,555 | 27,491 | 5.0% |
| 2026 | 566,616 | 160,616 | 28.3% | 68,938 | 21,465 | 3.8% |
The climb is not a straight line. SUV share nearly doubled to 18.0 per cent in 2019, dipped to 15.3 per cent in the pandemic year of 2020, climbed to a high of 26.1 per cent in 2022, eased through 2023 and 2024, then rose to a fresh high of 28.3 per cent in 2026. National brands first appear in force within our January-to-August window in 2019, when the Perodua Aruz and the Proton X70 register 20,282 and 18,468 respectively. (The X70 had launched in December 2018, outside every year's January-to-August window.) Their share of the SUV category peaked at 67.2 per cent in 2021 and has eased since to 42.9 per cent, though their absolute numbers in 2026 (68,938) are close to the 2022 high (71,141). Over the same later years, new Chinese brands such as Chery, Jetour and BYD entered the category; we do not claim one movement caused the other.
We checked whether this is real, not a relabelling
A rise like this could in principle be an artefact of JPJ moving existing models into the SUV column. By the clearest test available in the data, reclassification is a small part of the story at most. Of the 160,616 SUVs registered in the first eight months of 2026, 125,198 (77.9 per cent) carry a model name that does not appear anywhere in the 2018 file, matched after standardising spelling and punctuation. The largest of these are models that any Malaysian buyer knows arrived after 2018: the Proton X50, the Perodua Ativa and the Perodua Traz, none of which appears anywhere in the 2018 file.
Some reclassification did happen, and we say so plainly. A handful of crossovers that JPJ recorded as passenger cars ("motokar") in 2018 appear as SUVs ("jip") in 2026, the largest being the Honda HR-V (8,572 registrations in the 2018 window) and the Toyota C-HR (3,325), along with several premium European models. That is real, but it is far too small to account for a category that nearly quadrupled: even if every model name that appears in the 2018 file were set aside entirely, the remaining new names alone would still be 22.1 per cent of the whole market in 2026, more than double the entire SUV share of 2018. Body type is JPJ's own classification throughout, and we counted it exactly as recorded rather than reclassifying anything ourselves.
The limits, stated plainly
These are registrations, not sales. A registration can lag a purchase, and it can include company or fleet bookings. The body-type labels ("jip" for SUV, "motokar" for passenger car, "pick_up" for pick-up) are JPJ's own, and we counted them exactly as recorded. The denominator for every share is all registrations in JPJ's yearly car file, which covers every car body type, including pick-ups and window vans. Our "new model name" test matches on the maker-and-model text after standardising spelling and punctuation, so a model that was renamed or given a new generation label between years would read as new; we treat 77.9 per cent as an upper bound and lean on the named, well-known post-2018 models for the conclusion. These figures describe new cars entering the market each year, not the full stock of vehicles already on Malaysian roads. We compare January to August in every year because the 2026 file currently ends in August. And we make no per-state claim, because 87 per cent of 2026 rows record the registration channel rather than a state.
Every figure here is our own count of the primary JPJ registration files on data.gov.my, reproducible from the public files as described above. Nothing is drawn from another publisher's reporting.
