Proton appointed their founding father as the Chairman and Advisor

After floundering for years building rubbish quality cars that no one wants to buy, Proton decided to try to stop the slide by appointing their founder Dr. Mahathir as their Chairman and Advisor. Many observers are scoffing at this because Dr.M does not take competition lightly and only knows who to create protection for any company he has interests in. All this came in the wake of Malaysia starting to liberalize the automotive industry after decades of protectionism of Proton. Proton has failed miserably to make itself a proper global car maker despite having massive head starts over car companies from China, Korea and India. Proton was cash rich in the 1990s and made the biggest mistake of buying loss making motorcycle company Augusta and sports car maker Lotus.

Numerous Proton parts suppliers and consultants revealed that the company is not only riddled with corruption at almost every level but also their engineering team is incompetent. Parts suppliers complained that the only way to secure a parts supply deal is to provide sufficient kick backs to authorizing personnel in the company at the expense of quality parts which was hardly surprising since Proton parts are notoriously poor quality. Consultants who visited their plant and engineering team also noticed the engineering team's lack of expertise and knowledge on car design and manufacturing.

One of the main examples was the in-house designed Proton Satria Neo. The engineering team forgot to incorporate the height of the seat rails as part of the measurement for head room inside the car cabin, upon receiving the seats from the seat factory, they only realized that the seat rail had to be added! hence... the seat position is much higher than it should be and this affected the head room of the cabin. Tall drivers would struggle to get in and sit comfortably.

Proton's own design engine the Campro which supposedly was designed to have the cam profiling function to help engine performance was a fuel guzzler and lacked torque and refinement. The engine was coarse and matched to a poorly chosen transmission which made the car sluggish and dull to drive.
After being forced to buy a badly made and badly designed car, how much longer does the Malaysian public have to put up with such poor quality cars from Proton. If the company is losing money hand over fist and is incapable of designing their own cars the least it should do is shut down or just focus on rebadging better designed cars from other car manufacturers.
Dr.M's argument is that if Proton closed down over 100,000 people will lose their jobs. The answer to that is a YES and a NO. Yes. a lot of people will lose their jobs, No, if the Government does not have to protect Proton and liberalizes the car industry and mandate that foreign car companies must have a local assembly operation in the country in order to sell cars (or enjoy lower taxes), it would see that most of the 100,000 people be employed again plus create greater business and employment opportunities from the supporting industry for the investments pumped in by the foreign car companies.
Dr.M's argument is lame to say the least but it is a plain attempt to save the company he started.
Malaysia's automotive industry just became bleaker!

BMW i8 - signs of things to come

BMW recently introduced their i8 hybrid sports car. On paper it looks quite impressive considering that it has a 3 cylinder 1.5 litre turbo engine with an electric motor. The design is very clever in the way that it uses both the engine and motor for real performance that can humble traditional sports cars but yet return fantastic fuel economy. The car was designed with a single purpose of efficiency but not forgetting the fun factor. The electric motor offers serious grunt when the driver calls upon maximum performance.

The car does not look ugly like a typical boring Japanese hybrid. It turns the design concept upside down where the exterior and interior looks like the car is from 20 years in the future. The car on its own looks like something from Buck Rogers and instills some curiosity from onlookers and also the driver.

I believe that this car is quite a revolution in the hybrid world and is definitely going to change the way we look at hybrid engine and hybrid cars. It is not something to laugh but it definitely a great step forward for hybrid cars. BMW did think completely outside the box when designing and engineering the i8 and they did a fantastic job.