For a peek to a car, click here.
Somebody, please, tell me that’s really is a Proton. It’s way too cool.
According to some sources, it’s the new Proton car. It’s Proton Sutera, developed by Lotus of England. As usual, the name isn’t that impressive but this time, the name certainly does not reflect the design of the new car. If this really is a Proton, I guess my favorite car right now is Sutera instead of the new Toyota Celica.
The way I see it, Proton’s design is getting better and better, given enough period of time. It was first established in the mid-80s as a national project by the Malaysian government under the supervision of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The first few designs were simply the recreation of Mitsubishi’s Evolution models. Up to date, the most admired copycats are the Proton Perdana and the GTi (I can’t recall whether Perdana is really a copy cat of Evo, but for the sake of this entry, what the heck).
Unfortunately, within a few years time, AFTA, a free trade treaty will come to effect in Malaysia. AFTA, from the free-trade world’s point of view (according to Econ 101), is a good thing for the consumers. However, for Malaysia’s arena, it marks a grave future for the local car industry. Fierce competition will surely force Proton to fall to its knee. There is no way Proton could compete with supergiants such as Toyota, General Motors and Mercedes-Chrysler. These supergiants are far too efficient, plus they can afford to have a high cost production compare to Proton, which by the standard of these supergiants, is a mere ant. To protect the local industry, I guess Malaysia should not have signed any deal about free trade in the past but, of course, we can never change the past.
My opinion is, the government must shield the local car manufacturing industry regardless any free-trade treaty it has signed. The American burnt the ABM Treaty just like that. Why can’t we dump AFTA? (Don’t answer that)