Having the man in the picture does give a much better idea of the scale and certainly rules out a great many possibilities. The turret can’t have been that big after all. I’ve been doing a lot of research on armoured cars recently (for a book I’m working on) and this very small vehicle doesn’t match anything I can think of let alone those known to have operated in Malaya.
Blowing up the picture x 4 one can see through the hatch where the hull has rusted away on the starboard side and the metal is very thin to start with. Also there is no internal division so that blows an idea I had that one of the two front hatches covered an engine compartment. My railcar theory goes out of the window too (despite this being about the right size and shape for an armoured draisine) as such a vehicle would have drivers position at both ends (unless it has been designed by a singularly inept railway engineer).
Given all this I would suggest that this was one of the improvised armoured vehicles used by the estates and rubber plantation companies during the emergency to protect their workers from communist insurgents. I think Hanno’s suggestion that was fitted onto a car chassis with the engine outside the shell (possibly protected by separate plates?) is the most likely. The complete vehicle would have looked rather like a Beaverbug.
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