I refer to the impending ban on imported used car parts set to start on June 2011. This means come that date, consumers will not be able to buy cheaper secondhand car parts - mostly from Japan - from the ‘kereta potong’ shops when their cars break down and instead they will have to buy new parts.

 

The government supports this ban because they say that these secondhand parts are ‘inferior’ and cause accidents while consumers against the ban quote - quite rightly - the cheaper cost of these secondhand parts and their availability for older cars. I would like to add to these two factors another one - the quality aspect.

I am the average car-owner but I sometimes do minor repairs to the car myself as I understand the mechanics under the hood. This means I have purchased new and used car parts before. What I want to say is that in Malaysia, an absolutely new car part that comes out of a shiny box is not necessarily better than what you buy from the ‘kereta potong’ place.

I don't know if the manufacturers of these new parts cut corners or just make plain inferior products but sometimes the new parts creak and groan the minute you fix them in. This leads me to believe that the new parts manufacturers either cut corners, make shoddy products or there are simply a lot of counterfeits floating around out there. Sometimes even the seller of the parts, when questioned, does not know the origin of these new parts!

A case to point is when I decided to change the shock absorbers on my 10-year-old Japanese car a couple of years back. I bought and fixed in a couple of spanking new absorbers but to my horror, they started creaking and groaning the minute they were installed.

Even after I complained and the seller changed my new absorbers to another set of new absorbers, they creaked and groaned after just a month. Finally, I had to take the new ones out and replace them with my old ones which came with the car and which were still functioning after 12 years.

Another case. The window X-bar on my cousin's brand new locally-made car buckled and bent over on the first day it was delivered. The X-bar only has to support the window and pushes it up and down - it is not a high-tech component.

The fact that such a simple piece - and brand new on top of that - could fail really makes me think that there is a quality problem with locally-manufactured parts. Maybe it is these substandard new locally-made parts and not the imported used parts that are causing all the accidents that the government says has happened.

 

Unless and until the quality of locally-made new car parts improve, we are going to find that the secondhand car parts imported from Japan by the ‘potong kereta’ guy is of better quality and more durable than its newly-made siblings found here.

 

Why not let the free market determine if consumers wants to buy the secondhand car parts from Japan or the new ones found locally? This instead of legislation. Don’t you think people will choose to buy a new thing if it is good and affordable over a used one? The fact that people are opting for secondhand car parts speaks volumes about this industry.

 

Instead of rising to the occasion by improving quality, controlling cost and meeting the competition head on, the new car parts manufacturers and distributors get to benefit by default from this latest ban.  

Hopefully, the government is not trying to protect the interest of the new car parts oligarches at the expense of the freedom of choice for the consumer.