By now, every single car here in Malaysia will come with the new Vehicle Ownership Certificate (VOC), a much smaller document compared to the previous 'geran' of the yesteryears. Some details pertaining to your vehicle have been omitted, including the car's colour. But does this indicate that you can change it to any colour spectrum under the sun without facing any legal issues from the authorities?

With many temptations from paint shops and wrap promotions, some people will be more than interested to 'change things up' a bit. In short, you can do so BUT there's a certain procedure you must do in order to keep things on the legal side. The Road Transport Department (JPJ) has posted a very easy-to-understand photo of how you can go about it.

Here are the steps you're required to do in order to change your car's colour legally here in good ol' Malaysia.

1. Repaint your car (yup, you can do this first, no need to submit any proposal or forms beforehand)
2. Once that's done, head over to the nearest JPJ office
3. Determine the new main colour. If there's more than one, the dominant colour is the one that covers more than 60% of the vehicle
4. Fill in the JPJ K8 form and submit it to the JPJ officer on duty
5. The JPJ officer will then update the details of your freshly painted vehicle on the MySikap system
6. No need to pay, but don't forget to bring your identification and VOC 

Why is this important? Well, you can get fined for changing your car's colour without informing the JPJ. More importantly, if your car gets into an unfortunate incident, there's a good chance that insurance companies won't cover the costs for repairs if they find out that your car colour is different compared to the one stated on the MySikap system. Better be safe than sorry, folks!