The Story of National Cars of Indonesia: Part 1.

"Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW." (aya-yu) 01/16/2015 at 16:41 • Filed to: None

5

2

Since the early 1970's, Indonesia government already aims to build their very own National Cars of Indonesia. A car that built from ground up in Indonesia, by Indonesia, and for Indonesia. And now, your very own uncle Aya will tell you all you need to knows about cars from Indonesia.

The very first attempt of making the National Cars of Indonesia is by contacting 3 famous automaker at that time: Volkswagen, Toyota, and Datsun. The requirements were simple: Build a car that was simple enough to carried some load, could be fixed as easily as possible, and could be produced here in Indonesia. After the requirement settled, they showed up with these cars. First, a Datsun Sena, which looks like this:

Datsun Sena so far only existed in pictures, nobody knows what's underneath that body since all the Datsun Senas were scrapped. Back then, there was approximately 250 of this thing were produced by an Indonesian branch of Datsun called PT Indokaya. The only thing that we know is, it has a 1.3l engine, and every single thing on it was made in Indonesia. Datsun decides to scrap all of them because why bother building a cheap car for 1 single market only? Plus they had no monies back then.

The second was the famous as hell Toyota Kijang.

The Kijang, despite it wears Toyota badge, was designed in-house by Toyota Indonesia. It based on a brand new ladder chassis, and powered by 3K engine from the Toyota Corolla at the time. It was really, really basic form of transport.

For example, it has no door lock, just like LMP car. It has no door handle. It has no side glass. instead has a plastic mat, that you rolled down when it was rainy to prevent water coming into the cabin. It has no rear glass. It has body from a very basic casting of steel. And the only thing that uses electricity is the lights, and that's it.

But despite all the flaws, everybody loves the Kijang. It even becomes a byword of car. Seriously, if you ask anyone in Indonesia about Toyota Kijang, at least they will acknowledge it. Kijang was so famous in Indonesia that it becomes a cars of the people. To put it simply, Kijang was the Ford F-150 of Indonesia. It was that success.

The last of the first attempt of this Indonesian National Car making was the Volkswagen Mitra, also known as the Basistransporter. Wikipedia may says it only reach the prototype stage, but actually it enters production, it was produce by PT Garuda Mataram Motor in Jakarta. But it's not selling very well because of two reasons: 1) The Kijang was cheaper and 2) if you want a VW Van why don't you buy a better built and better equipped VW Transporter?

But the problem is, these cars, despite built in Indonesia, some people still saying this is not an Indonesian National car. Why? It has a foreign badge. So in the second part, we'll try our hand to build our national car, ourselves.

Well, with some help from Zagato, British Leyland, ItalDesign, Mazda, and Mercedes-Benz. Interested? Just wait!

Tohru > Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW. 01/16/2015 at 17:59

1

I thought the national car of Indonesia was the bus.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Tohru 01/16/2015 at 18:22

0

nope , some rebadged Kia.