Proton Oh Proton.

I just realized that Malaysian carmaker, Proton, is not getting any better really. OK, they managed to post some profits in the fourth quarter of 2005, congratulations for that. But, one have to remember that they managed to gain some profits because Proton gave massive discounts on their cars which I personally think, is not sustainable in the long run.

Then, Proton signs up an agreement with Mitsubishi to reduce production costs by sharing platforms and components. Although this sounds promising for Proton, one again has to remember that Mitsubishi is also a loss-making car company. In fact, they are the only unprofitable Japanese carmaker. Proton also seeks to co-operate with Volkswagen in developing few new models for the Malaysian market. This might seems great to Proton but Volkswagen is currently not in a very good shape. They are struggling in the US with their tiny market share and the top management team is in some kind of internal conflict. Later, we see Delphi wanted to increase co-operation with Proton where they currently are producing some components in Proton models such as Wira and Satria. This is interesting because last time I heard about Delphi was when they filed for bankruptcy in 2004 or 2005. Soon after that, Proton said that they are going to work with Chery to enter the Chinese market. Well, that’s great except Chery has a history of copying other cars such as Mercedes C-class and Honda CR-V. And the latest news about Proton is they are going to bring Mitsubishi 380 (Australian-built model) into the Malaysian market as a replacement for Perdana. But as you might already know, Mitsubishi 380 is not a successful product in Australia. Let me get this straight, this model has not been successful in Australia, so let’s dump this 3.8L fuel-guzzler in Malaysia. Is that it?

There you have it, the story of our beloved national car. Ciao.

SOURCE: GoAutoe-news