Joshua Walker – Commentators have warned that President Prabowo Subianto's national car program is at risk of repeating the failure of Tommy Soeharto's national car brand, Timor, in the 1990s. They are right to remind us of Tommy's Timor debacle. But when considering Indonesia's national car ambitions, we should also remember another of Soeharto's sons: Bambang Trihatmodjo.
Bambang may be the only cast member of the 1990s-era national car episode to also have a starring role in Prabowo's national car program.
In 1995, Bambang's Tricitra Karya began assembling cars for Hyundai. After President Soeharto formulated a national car program in February 1996, Bambang sought to participate in the program by selling Hyundai cars under the brand name Bimantara.
However, it was Tommy's Timor – selling rebranded Kia cars – that Soeharto chose as the program's pioneer. Soeharto even granted Timor the right to import completely built-up vehicles from Korea, with full import duty and luxury goods tax exemptions, and sell them as national cars.
Bambang publicly denounced Soeharto's favouritism towards Tommy. But their fraternal rivalry was soon made pointless by the Asian financial crisis and the overthrow of Soeharto in May 1998. Timor and Bimantara brand vehicles disappeared from the market and Tommy's partnership with Kia ended.
Timor out, Handal in
Yet Bambang's partnership with Hyundai survived. Two companies owned by Bambang, Hyundai Mobil Indonesia and Hyundai Indonesia Motor, became Hyundai's local vehicle distributor and local vehicle assembler, respectively.
Throughout the 2000s and the 2010s, these companies were minor players in an Indonesian automotive industry dominated by Japanese brands. Key figures at the companies were Jongkie Sugiarto (Soeharto's former presidential car mechanic) and Panji Adhikumoro (Bambang's son).
Then, in 2019, Hyundai decided to build its own factory in Indonesia. Hyundai Mobil Indonesia could continue to distribute Hyundai vehicles, but Hyundai Indonesia Motor would need to make its own way in the world. Hyundai Indonesia Motor was thus renamed Handal Indonesia Motor, with Bambang retaining ownership of the vehicle assembler through his companies Asriland and Bina Cakra Niaga.
Handal's first post-Hyundai partner was Chery. It began to assemble internal combustion engine vehicles for the Chinese carmaker in 2022. Having formerly had a disappointing partnership with Indomobil, Chery was quickly impressed by Handal. From 2024, it entrusted Handal to assemble its electric cars. Handal also began to assemble electric cars for another Chinese carmaker, Neta.
By 2025, Handal had become the undisputed partner of choice for Chinese brands looking to dip their toes into the Indonesian market, having struck assembly deals with Geely, Jetour, BAIC, and XPeng. Its small factory in Bekasi Municipality could not meet this wave of new orders, so it built a new, larger, factory in Purwakarta Regency.
All this was a rather surprising turn of events: Bambang's assembly business, a small and unimportant relic of the Soeharto era, had transformed itself into a key agent of President Joko Widodo's Chinese investment-led electric vehicle transition program.
However, upon becoming president in October 2024, Prabowo began to shift Indonesia's automotive policy focus away from Chinese investment and electric vehicles. The new policy focus: national cars.
Prabowo adopted the Maung MV3, an internal combustion engine vehicle made by state-owned military manufacturer Pindad, as his presidential vehicle. He instructed senior government officials to use the Maung MV3 and encouraged increased uptake of the model by the military and the police.
Pindad was not capable of quickly delivering the thousands of new orders created by Prabowo's program, so it partnered with a more experienced vehicle assembler: Handal. Beginning in late 2024, and throughout 2025, Handal assembled the Maung MV3 at its Bekasi factory.
Nearly three decades after he was pipped at the post by Tommy, Bambang had finally won the right to build Indonesia's national cars.
This means that when Bambang and Prabowo shook hands at the November 2025 ceremony naming Soeharto a national hero, it was a handshake between two men who are actively cooperating in the development of Indonesia's national car program.
It is difficult to imagine a moment that better encapsulates what Vedi Hadiz calls the end of Reformasi (post-Soeharto reformation): a handshake between Soeharto's son and former son-in-law simultaneously marking the rewriting of Indonesia's national history and the remoulding of its industrial future.
Chinese cars or national cars?
As a result of its decision to assemble for both Chinese brands and Pindad, Handal now sits at the intersection of two contradictory policy programs: Widodo's Chinese investment-led electric vehicle transition program and Prabowo's national car program.
The contradiction is as follows: Widodo's program has led to a rapid proliferation of new vehicle brands and new vehicle factories in Indonesia. This is a significant achievement, but it is driving intense market competition that risks creating a pattern of inefficient production runs and capacity underutilisation across Indonesia's established Japanese vehicle factories and newer Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese vehicle factories.
Rather than developing policies to carefully manage this risk, Prabowo is throwing fuel on the fire by introducing an additional competitor into an already crowded industry.
In Subang Regency, where BYD and VinFast have recently built factories with respective annual production capacities of 150,000 and 50,000 units, Pindad now plans to build a national car factory with an annual production capacity of 100,000 units. Given that the Indonesian car market has been stagnant since 2013, it is hard to see how all this new capacity will ever be used – unless long-established Japanese factories are to close.
We do not yet know whether Handal will be involved at Pindad's planned Subang factory.
If Pindad does not involve Handal at Subang, then their current assembly arrangement will end when the new factory becomes operational. Handal will likely then return to focusing entirely on assembling Chinese brand vehicles. For the second time in his life, Bambang will find himself a rival to Indonesia's national car program.
But if Pindad is to avoid accusations of simply being the dependent partner of KG Mobility – the Korean manufacturer that supplies the technology for Pindad brand vehicles – then it would probably be wise to involve an experienced Indonesian assembler like Handal at the planned Subang factory. Handal might even consider selling its Bekasi and Purwakarta factories to Chinese companies so that it can focus on partnering with Pindad at Subang.
Whatever happens, it seems certain there are more twists and turns to come in the unfinished story of Soeharto's sons and national cars.