My colleague's car & our car industry

My ride in my colleague's car to my company's dinner. She drove a Proton Wira 1.3 aeroback, it's pretty decent sedan car with the design taken from Mitsubishi Lancer of the early 90s, well it's something an average income earner can only afford in Malaysia. It looks nice from the outside but once i got in, it's another story. First of all, when i opened the door, it feels and sounds like an old car. A few miles of ride further tells me that the car squeks a lot, when going over uneven road surface or when the air cond activate/deactivate. The engine sounds thrashy and coarse at high rpm. And the car is hardly 3 years of use.

Our national car project was first initiated with the ambition of acquiring our capability of designing and manufacturing our own car. The intention was good, though we were a bit late way back in the 80s when the car industry was very mature and subsequently witness so many manufacturers in Japan and other countries have fallen to the giants. But here, thanks to market protection, Proton carried on ... and after 20 years, it still carries on producing the same model as the one produced in the initial year, with the price almost doubled. I understand that in most part of the world, we can never see an appreciation in car value but in Malaysia, it's a land where anything is possible.

I don't own a Proton but a Perodua, another Malaysia national car manufacturing rebadged Daihatsu cars. But that's another story of how Perodua came into being in the mid 90s. More story coming up on how our national cars evolve in the 90s and how it has benefited a few but burdened a lot.