17th Jun 2006, 17:41

My sister owned a Wira 1.5L hatchback. Year of manufacture is 2001. The total mileage is 12,000km, very low usage.

One day I borrowed her car and sent it for repairs due to the engine noise. The foreman told me the problem of this car is, the engine is locally made unlike thes old Wira which is a Mitsubishi original. The worst is, the comment from the foreman on this engine is "consuming" motor oil. Which means, you need to check your engine motor oil level even before the next 5000km service interval.

I am just wondering what have Proton benefited from the Lotus technology? Or we are just continue to feed the British Lotus company for over the last 2 decades ever since we acquired this company? Where is the technology transfer? How much does the gen 2 gained from the Lotus technology?

I think Proton deserve to eventually be closed down. It is a complete failure and it is a wrong decision. Agusta acquisition is another crap project.

Proton has been existed over 20 years, and yet we never see any improvement in the technology and reliability. It is still as crap as before. The simple power window problem has never been fixed since the 1st generation of Wira. If you ever notice when a Proton car is at the toll gate, the driver did not wind down the window, instead they open the door to pick up the ticket. This is really a crappy car!!!

I have lost complete confidence in the locally made cars, not because we did not support the government initiative, but Proton take too long for granted and never seek for improvement over the decades. How long will the big brother continue to feed them? Have they ever taken a look at how Toyota climbed up to be world number 1 in quality and quantity? What look east policy have we achieved so far? I am not here to condemn the government, it is the right time for all of us to ponder what has went wrong and how Proton view the threat from the open market in 2010? Can they survive to compete with others in another 4 years from now?

In my opinion, I would rather consider to buy Produa than Proton as I am anticipating Proton eventually will close down and there will be no spare parts to be supported.

China takes barely 10 years to develop numerous local made cars, a complete local design. I worked in China for years, and I have talked to those local made car owners, they told me so far there is no defects after 3 years they purchased (like Cherry, Zhong Hua). They never have power window problem like this crap Wira.

Good Luck Proton...