KUALA LUMPUR: Stellantis is poised to double its dealers in Malaysia to 30 by the end of this year after achieving a significant milestones just over 100 days of operation since last March.
With a total of 14 dealers it currently has in Peninsular Malaysia, the French-Italian-American carmaker plans to expand to Sabah and Sarawak. It will start with Sabah in the current quarter.
Stellantis Malaysia managing director Jamie Morais said dealers are given some level flexibility this year to make the needed renovations and upgrade works.
Next year will see changes as all dealerships will be standardised and carry the same brand corporate image, reflecting the company's core values of customer centricity.
"We believe this will strengthen the brands local presence as well as give customers the confidence that Stellantis and Peugeot are here to stay," Morais told Business Times.
Since the formation of its national sales company (NSC) in March, it has taken over managing the sales, aftersales and brand marketing of Peugeot from the previous distributor.
"We are proud to share that the aftersales team has successfully worked on reducing 7,000 open part line items to 499 which is a 93 per cent decrease. We also took ownership of over 2,500 open cases and successfully reduced it 95 per cent to 117 cases," Morais said.
He added that the call centre team continues growing and expanding to cater to the customers and offer efficient service.
According to him, it now has 13 personnels from five previously which improved the unanswered call rates from 53 per cent to 2.0 per cent.
On sales, Morais said Stellantis Malaysia had seen an increase of more than 100 per cent month-on-month (MoM).
This was led by the all-new locally assembled (CKD) Peugeot 408, which was launched in April this year, apart from other Peugeot models that are available.
"We want to continue capitalising on the momentum by ensuring we have a healthy order bank and stocks to meet customer demands as we believe the current Peugeot models cater to the current market trends of crossovers and SUVs," he added.
"Due to high traffic and interest at the Malaysian Autoshow, we want to continue the momentum and ensure we have attractive sales activations to continuously engage with our customers," he said.
Leveraging Stellantis renowned brand name as the world's fourth largest automaker with 14 marques under its portfolio, Morais said it is an exciting time for Malaysia as one of the company's objectives is to revive iconic brands under it.
"First, we have Leapmotor, which is set to launch in the fourth quarter of this year. This will be our first brand to sell only electric vehicles (EV) for the Malaysian market.
"We will bring in Leapmotor C10, which uniquely sits in its own segment and is Leapmotor's first global model," he said.
Leapmotor C10 is a D-segment SUV, an affordable EV car that has a battery range of up to 420km (WLTP).
Additionally, Stellantis plans to reintroduce French car Citroën to make continental cars accessible to the Malaysian consumers, which currently unavailable in the market, he said.
As inflation and declining currency are expected to increase prices, Morais assured that customers are prioritised and hence, the company continues to ensure the offerings remain competitive in the Malaysian market.
Looking forward, he said Stellantis Malaysia will open a regional parts hub soon that is expected to improve and streamline the parts distribution in Malaysia and the region.