Malaysian car company Proton recently launched their first turbo charged hatch back model. Hoping to shake off the image of poor quality the company has added a lot of functions to this model such as Day time driving lights, Traction control, 6 air bags, an Android powered in-car entertainment system and a turbo charged engine.
The engine is taken from the Exora model that was launched in 2012. Proton has been known to make poor quality cars from the start and they have not shaken off that image since then. Hoping that this model will be a hot hatch, judging from the performance on paper the car is nowhere near a hot hatch. The hot hatch benchmark by world standards have moved tremendously since 10 years ago with most European hot hatches pushing out 200hp while Proton only manages a 140ps performance. In comparison to the Peugeot 308 with the same 1.6 litre displacement and turbo charger the performance is 20hp higher and 35Nm more twist.
Performance may not necessarily be everything but with the way the Proton guys are marketing this car, it seems a little lost. It is not a hot hatch, it is not a warm hatch, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is still questionable about the quality of this model. The previously launched Preve promised a lot but when videos of angry customers smashing their cars at dealerships went viral, it was very obvious that Proton achieved nothing.
Now Proton is looking to launch their R3 version of he Suprima S in the hope of pushing their sporty appeal for the car. R3 is Proton's performance division similar to AMG of Mercedes or TRD of Toyota. Having a turbo charged engine means it is easy to crank out more performance but will it really live up to expectations?
It will really be interesting to see how well the car is received in the next 1 year. Being priced close to Toyota Vios and Honda City both of which are very popular in Malaysia, it will be a tough fight for Proton to wrestle customers from Toyota and Honda since Proton's reputation is not at its best at the moment.
