Proton to launch new luxurious sedan to boost sales
Proton to launch new luxurious sedan to boost sales
Eileen NG, Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Malaysia's national carmaker Proton will launch a new luxurious sedan - dubbed the Chancellor - next month that it hopes will help boost flagging sales, officials said.
The Chancellor will make its debut as an official car to ferry delegates attending next month's summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, Proton chairman Mohammed Azlan Hashim was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency on Tuesday.
The company is sponsoring the use of 295 Proton cars, including 40 units of the Chancellor, as official vehicles at the Dec. 12-14 summit.
Azlan said the Chancellor will be made available to the public from Dec. 15 at the company's showrooms and at appointed dealers, but declined to give further details.
"The public release will be next month. We will work out the pricing depending on the specifications," he said, according to Bernama.
Proton officials said the Chancellor, which has a 2.0-liter engine, is designed to be a chauffeur-driven vehicle to meet requirements of senior government officials, corporate executives and other VIPs.
The Chancellor, which shares a production platform with the smaller Waja launched five years ago, is a stretched version of the Waja model but with more luxurious trimmings, a company official said Tuesday.
Proton has come under intense pressure to bolster sales as its market share dwindled to around 30 percent in June from 57 percent in 1993, throwing the company into the red in the quarter that ended June.
Faced with a shrinking market share and growing foreign competition as tariffs on imported cars are being eroded as part of market liberalization, Proton has entered talks to sell an equity stake to German auto giant Volkswagen AG.
Azman Mokhtar, managing director of state investment firm Khazanah Nasional that controls Proton, said on Tuesday that negotiations with Volkswagen were ongoing but "it is quite clear that we need to form an alliance" for Proton to remain competitive.
He said Proton is still in the process of selecting a new chief executive since its former head was ousted in August, but declined to comment on a report that tipped a senior official in No. 2 carmaker Perodua as a likely candidate.
The Sun newspaper quoted sources as saying that Perodua's deputy managing director, Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir, who has had a previous stint in Proton, will likely fill the top Proton post left vacant by Mahaleel Ariff.