Vietnam will be seeing the first and only Skoda manufacturing plant in Southeast Asia (SEA) as it nears completion by March of this year. The Czech automaker under the Volkswagen Group has plans to begin operations by the end of Q1.
Skoda’s brand new plant will operate with the Thanh Cong Group, who are also local assemblers for Hyundai and Nissan vehicles. The facility based in Quang Ninh will have a production capacity of 120,000 vehicles units annually.
Aside from the soon-to-be open Vietnamese plant, the only other Skoda production facilities in Asia are in China and India, producing models tailored for their respective markets.
Skoda Chairman Klaus Zellmer says that Vietnam is the Czech marque’s ticket to penetrate into the ASEAN market, acting as a production and export hub for the region.
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The Czech car brand made its debut in Vietnam in 2023 and currently has two models available for sale: The Skoda Karoq and Skoda Kodiaq which are imported (CBU) from the Czech Republic.
The last time Skoda cars were sold on Malaysian soil, it was during the 2000s by an importer called Auto Praha, who was a company under the Berjaya Group. Since then, Bermaz has taken over custody of the Czech carmaker brand in Malaysia, although we’re unsure if the company still holds the distributorship today, since the marque has left our market many years ago.
With Skoda having plans to export their cars into other ASEAN markets, could Malaysia see the winged arrow badge on the roads once more?
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