About 3 years ago in April 2023, Daihatsu Motor admitted that the management manipulated crash test results on 88,000 cars that were manufactured in Thailand and Malaysia and sold within the past year.

The issue affects Toyota-branded Yaris Ativ and Agya models, as well as Perodua cars produced by a Malaysian joint venture and another vehicle which was being developed by Daihatsu.

They were sold in Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Indonesia and Mexico, Daihatsu said on Apr 28th 2023. 

The cars had components in their door trims during crash tests that likely influenced the results and were different to those eventually sold to the public, Daihatsu said.

At the time, tests were to be conducted again and sales will resume if the vehicles were certified properly, the auto manufacturer said.

Following the scandal, independent, in-house, and third-party tests (such as those by MIROS in Malaysia) showed that the production vehicles still complied with the necessary UN Regulation 94 and 95 safety standards, despite the fraudulent testing procedure.

Despite the scandal, the ASEAN NCAP verified that the 2023 Vios still achieved a 5-star rating and the 2023 Daihatsu Xenia achieved a 3-star ASEAN NCAP rating in 2023.

“We sincerely apologise to the customers and stakeholders whose trust and support we have betrayed,” Daihatsu president Soichiro Okudaira said at a media briefing the following week.

Established 1907, Daihatsu sells around 1.1 million cars per year, which make up around 10 percent of Toyota’s 10 million vehicle sales per year.

“This first started in April where the issue was about collision tests being falsified”, motor industry analyst David Bailey told the BBC’s World Service. “Then, an independent commission by Toyota found more issues including air bags and speed tests.

“There’s no suggestion at the moment that the actual products were unsafe, but what seems to have happened is that they tested a car with components in and then sold a car with different components in, so that’s become a major issue”.