Proton cars outsprint Japanese

Proton cars outsprint Japanese

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia's national Proton car is accelerating away from its Japanese, South Korean and European competitors, with annual domestic sales set to exceed 100,000, officials said yesterday.

The state auto venture between Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Bhd. (Proton) and Japan's Mitsubishi group only sold 7,500 units in its first year of production in 1985.

But preliminary estimates for last year showed a sales figure as high as 107,000, officials said.

"We can expect fierce competition from our competitors with more new models being introduced, and competitively-priced," Proton managing director Mohamed Nadzmi Mohamed Salleh told the Business Times daily.

Officials said the closest domestic competitor to Proton was Japan's Toyota, which sold 12,408 locally-assembled cars last year.

Nissan, Honda, Isuzu and Mazda are among other Japanese auto makers with assembly operations in Malaysia. South Korea's Hyundai, Sweden's Volvo and Germany's BMW and Mercedes also assemble selected models of their cars here.

Nadzmi said total passenger car sales in Malaysia was estimated at 150,000 this year, with Proton commanding 74 percent of the market or 110,000 units.

Much of the growth was expected from a sports model of the car launched late last year and a two-liter model coming out this year, Nadzmi said.

The Proton was greeted with much skepticism when launched eight years ago but the government turned it around with constant improvements to the car and slapped huge taxes on imported autos, which naturally prompted local buyers to turn to the Proton.

Proton announced a group pre-tax profit of 145.3 million ringgit (US$58.12 million) for the six months to Sept. 30, 1994, up seven percent from the 135.4 million ringgit in the previous corresponding period.