All I can say is you buy second hand cars and you bear the risk. It all depends on how the original owner maintain the car. Plenty of people got burned too buying second hand Japanese or local brands. A 5 year old cats are usually the time where major parts need to be changed and that’s why people change cars after 5 or 6 years. Maybe I was lucky as even driving Getz for 6 years and Accent for 7 years, I did not encounter any major parts replacement problems.

As for parts, like I say it’s all original and it’s more costly than local or the 2 famous Japanese brand because they have non original parts.

The biggest problem with Korean brands is they got screwed by Malaysian distributors. Kia was badly handled by Naza while Hyundai distribution was not united until Sime Darby took over the whole franchise. Sime Darby is one of the worse car distributor in Malaysia as they have too many brands under their care. Over time, the sales never picked up and Korea never really bothered with Malaysian market.

If Korean cars are so bad, they would not have penetrated the western car markets including US. Malaysian has always been stuck with the mentality of Japanese cars are the best. You can see the same happening to China cars as well but China brands seems to be trying very hard to change that mentality.

It’s more due to distributor. Sales volume is not big enough like Japanese cars where they can store lots of parts.