Fiat in Malaysia

Fiat – which stands for Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino – is one of the oldest auto brands in the world which still exists. Founded 126 years ago in 1899, it began making cars in 1900. During its long history, it rose to become the largest automaker in Italy and also Europe, ranked third after GM and Ford for over 20 years.

Although the company faced problems in the 1980s, it reorganised and remained strong until 2009 when sales began declining. Thereafter, even though it had a range of small cars, they did not appeal enough against rivals from Japan which hit right at their segment.

In Malaysia, Fiat was also a strong brand in earlier years. It was distributed by different companies over the years, one of them being The East Asiatic Company. Some of its cars were also assembled at a plant in Johor. This plant was acquired by the UMW Group at the time when the company was bidding for the Toyota franchise. It needed a plant as a back-up in case the Inchcape Group did not sell off its assembly plant in Selangor (ASSB) which was making Toyota vehicles.

After UMW took over Toyota, it still held on to the Fiat franchise for a while in the 1980s through a company known as Syarikat Fiat Distributors. Annual sales during the early part of that decade were around 1,500 units. However, with Toyota being a rapidly-growing brand, it probably decided that Fiat was an unnecessary distraction and let it go.

The next company to take over was Torino Motor Industries which maintained the brand’s presence though there are no records of the number of vehicles sold as Torino was not a member of the Malaysian Motor Traders Association. However, the number was probably small and all the models were imported in CBU form.

Back then, as the advertisement above (from 1998) shows, there was still a diverse range of models which included the Fiat 20V Coupe (RM150,000 in 1998). Torino held on to the brand till the end of the 2000s and then faded away.

It didn’t help, of course, that Fiat eventually became less interested in producing righthand drive models. The late Sergio Marchionne, who was CEO of Fiat from 2004 until his death in 2018, didn’t see it worthwhile to develop new RHD models as the number of markets and therefore potential volume was small.

Today, Fiat continues to exist in the Stellantis Group but its sales are limited to just a small number of markets with Italy, Brazil, Turkey, and Algeria being the largest. Its model range is also limited to just a handful but surprisingly, it is Stellantis’ bestselling brand and sold 1.2 million units globally in 2024.

Though Stellantis has a unit operating in Malaysia, Fiat has not been mentioned as one of the brands it will re-introduce although it has said that it is considering Citroen and Jeep for local assembly. Its plant in Kedah currently assembles Peugeot vehicles and will also assemble Leapmotor products from the end of 2025.