Proton Saga or Proton's Saga more like it

Proton introduced their very first model called the Saga back in the mid 1980s. the very model stayed in production for about 20 years before the next model came out, and now the 3rd generation finally came out. Spanning 30 years Proton only introduced 3 generations of the Saga. Now I know why they call it the Saga because it like a movie or story saga where it goes on and on taking a decade at least to see a new model. In this modern day all car companies are shortening their model life cycles to keep their model line up fresh and exciting. Even Porsche who previously took 9 years to introduce a new model has been shortening its model life cycle because it knows that the more new models they introduce will lead to more sales.

Proton's R&D department is taking the motto of "Don't fix whats not broken" to the extreme or they are just plain lazy! The newer iterations of the Saga seems like a minor step forward. Some may argue that it is a bare basic car and what can you really expect? That can easily be answered by the closest rival from Perodua which continuously take bigger and bigger steps ahead of Proton. Cheap doesn't mean it has to be bad! Cheap can also be decent if you do it right. Perodua is fortunate that they can draw from the massive parts bin from Daihatsu Japan and Proton is left developing engines of their own. However since Proton is better that assembling cars rather than doing its own R&D I would think that it would make better sense for them to solely focus on rebadging cars. The Proton Wira, Waja and Perdana were fine examples from Mitsubishi and they were reliable and decent value for money. If you don't have the right capacity to do R&D, stick to what you know best... rebadging cars.

the new Saga claims to be better but it is still yet to be seen. Proton claims good initial sales but this can be seen only in 6 months time when the sales figures are published rather than claimed by Proton. Making claims about the sales figures to boost confidence is one thing but the actual sales figure will speak for itself.

I wouldn't judge too quickly but there is always a market in malaysia for entry level cars. The economy is not good now and cheaper cars will be more popular since those who can't afford Japanese or Korean brands will revert to buying local cars.