Malaysia registered 74,259 new cars in September 2026, the most of any September since the public record began in 2000. It beats the previous September high of 69,019, set in 2023, and it is up 18.6 per cent on the 62,587 registered in September 2025.
But the record was not broad. Perodua and Proton together accounted for 86 per cent of the entire year-on-year increase, and 61.9 per cent of every car registered in the month, their biggest September share since 2003. Strip the two of them out and the rest of the market grew by just 6.2 per cent.
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Two companies did almost all of the growth
The market added 11,672 registrations over September a year earlier. Of that, Perodua and Proton added 10,021. Perodua rose 19.0 per cent (23,394 to 27,838) and Proton rose 44.4 per cent (12,572 to 18,149), Proton's strongest September since 2001.
Every other brand, taken together, added just 1,651 cars, a rise of 6.2 per cent. The single biggest gainer outside the national pair was Jetour, which went from 322 to 1,830; that gain of 1,508 alone equals 91 per cent of the net increase across all other brands, because gains elsewhere were offset by falls. Toyota was near steady at 10,606 (up 2.2 per cent). Honda fell 8.8 per cent to 4,155, Chery fell 3.7 per cent to 2,136, and BYD, the most-registered electric brand in September a year earlier, fell 40.2 per cent to 615.
The numbers behind the record
| September | New cars registered |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 74,259 |
| 2023 | 69,019 |
| 2022 | 68,305 |
| 2025 | 62,587 |
| 2024 | 61,071 |
| 2020 | 60,200 |
| 2013 | 54,229 |
| 2008 | 52,600 |
| Brand | September 2025 | September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perodua | 23,394 | 27,838 | +19.0% |
| Proton | 12,572 | 18,149 | +44.4% |
| Toyota | 10,380 | 10,606 | +2.2% |
| Honda | 4,554 | 4,155 | -8.8% |
| Chery | 2,219 | 2,136 | -3.7% |
| Jetour | 322 | 1,830 | +468.3% |
| Mitsubishi | 1,073 | 1,149 | +7.1% |
| BYD | 1,028 | 615 | -40.2% |
| Perodua + Proton | 35,966 | 45,987 | +27.9% |
| Everyone else | 26,621 | 28,272 | +6.2% |
What the record does and does not say
Three things keep the headline honest. First, these are registrations, not sales: a vehicle is counted when it is registered with the Road Transport Department (JPJ), which can lag the moment it was bought. Second, part of the 18.6 per cent jump is a low starting point. September 2025 was itself a below-average month at 62,587, under the 2025 monthly average of about 72,516, so the year-on-year gain looks larger than the underlying trend. Across the first nine months of the year the market is up a more modest 4.4 per cent (613,952 to 640,875). What is not flattered by any of that is the absolute count: 74,259 is the largest September total in the record, full stop. Third, data.gov.my notes that the earliest years of this series were harder to compile, so we treat the pre-2005 figures as indicative rather than exact.
Two notes on what the file holds. It is JPJ's "cars" category, which records new-vehicle registrations spanning motorcars, MPVs, SUVs, jeeps, pick-ups and window vans, so "cars" throughout means that whole category, not passenger cars alone. And this is a national count: we do not break it down by state, because 87.4 per cent of the rows record the registration channel ("Rakan Niaga", a JPJ partner portal) rather than a state, so any geographic split would describe only a small, unrepresentative share.
How to reproduce this: download the yearly car files (cars_2025.parquet and cars_2026.parquet, and the earlier years back to cars_2000.parquet for the record line) from data.gov.my under transportation, keep the rows dated in September, and count them, and the maker field, yourself. Every figure here is our own count of those files.
