Gov says no serious safety faults with Proton and Perodua vehicles. Do you believe them?

KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 (Bernama) -- There have been no cases of serious technical faults reported for the Proton and Perodua vehicles, the Dewan Rakyat was informed Monday.

Both the automobile producers have taken the appropriate steps to meet the international standards of safety and specifications, Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said.

"Todate, the technical issues faced by Proton have not involved safety features that could bring harm to users. As for Perodua, the average number of cases reported is less than two per cent from the number of vehicles produced," he said in his written reply to Hee Loy Sian (PKR-Petaling Jaya Selatan) during the Dewan Rakyat sitting here Monday.

Hee wanted to know the cases of faults found in Proton and Perodua vehicles while they were already in the market and on why immediate action were not taken or announcements made to buyers.

Mustapa said as there were no serious safety-related cases recorded by Proton and Perodua, no official general announcements like that made by leading global producers like Toyota and Honda were done.

"However, in its 25 years of operations, Proton has issued four press statements and informed users on safety related technical issues that had been identified.

"These included suspension failure in the Perdana model in 2001, crack in the rim (Waja, 2004), failure in jack assembly (Gen2 & Neo, 2007), problem with real wheel bearing (Savvy, 2008) which had been announced in the print and electronic media, websites, via telephone, SMS and letters," he added.

The query from the PKR MP is very valid. Safety regulators from Europe, US and China are tightening their nets and are uncovering more and more manufacturing defects from car makers. Basically the whole Toyota / Lexus saga opened a can of worms and many have wondered what the US Federal government road traffic safety watchdog NHTSA have been doing. Then the media started coming down hard and news of other unrelated recalls by other manufacturers were reported all over the world, including in countries where there are no existing consumer protection laws that demand manufacturers to publically disclose any defects. Proton have issued 4 recalls to date, and they should be given credit for being honest enough and to offer rectify the problems at no cost to consumers. Perodua is the most popular car make in Malaysia and it seems that in all its years in Malaysia its car are free of any problems that require a recall. Scour the Internet however and you might get a different picture.

Below are known defects that affected the Perodua Myvi, Malaysia's most popular car. Though it needs to be stressed that many of these issues should have been corrected in the later year models. But of course, too bad if you are stuck with an earlier batch model.

1. Steering wheel vibration under braking at higher speeds (around 100 km/h)

2. Fuel vapor leaking into the cabin after refueling to a full tank. You don't need to be reminded that fuel vapor is dangerous not only because it is flammable but also because it is damaging to human brains. The more you smell it the more stupid you become.

3. Rear windscreen window shattering - apparently there is a small point at the lower right corner of the glass, that when subjected to a very light but focused impact will cause the entire glass to shatter and break

4. Premature failure of third brake light

5. Erratic idling speed when air-con is switched on - this is normal in all cars but in the case of the Myvi, the engine rpm could shoot up to about 1,400 rpm when the air-con compressor kicks in, causing a sudden acceleration if you are not applying the brakes when stationary or driving at very slow speeds (i.e. parking). The problem is more noticeable in manual transmission variants, as the driver is not depressing the brake pedal as much as an automatic transmission driver when parking the vehicle. But so far we have not heard of anyone crashing their car because of this sudden acceleration. The newer ECUs should not be affected.

6. Premature failure of power window switches

So there you go. The first 5 problems are obviously safety related. In fact, these problems are common knowledge to those within the industry, and if you are nice enough to Perodua after sales guys and if they are sure that you are won't get them into trouble, they can easily verify the above.

The simple fact is that neither Malaysia nor any other ASEAN bloc countries, not even Singapore, have regulations that compel car makers to recall defective products or to make them public.

Early last year, UK parliament exercised the Freedom of Information Act to request for information regarding MOT test failures / problems split according to vehicle make / model to be made public. MOT test is UK's version of our Puspakom (of course it is much better regulated) and Japan's version of Shaken inspection, which is probably the most rigid in the world and explains why so many 5 years old cars are scrapped and exported out to South East Asia as reconditioned "luxury" grey imports. In the UK, a vehicle needs to pass the MOT test to verify its road worthiness before the owner can renew the vehicle road tax. It's not a conclusive but is still a very good indicator of real world vehicle reliability. The list is quite exhaustive but if you want to go through it, it can be downloaded here.

Obviously our government is not willing to push through a similar Freedom of Information Act bill, can you imagine the sort of worms that will be unearthed?! And because we do not have a similar Freedom of Information Act, whatever the minister says is the "truth."

Because of the inefficiency of local courts, it could take years for a case against a manucturer in a consumer tribunal court to be heard. Most owners will not be bothered to pursue the case and in only the most serious cases, will manufacturer offer compensation but on condition that the owner to signs an non-disclosure agreement to keep everything under the carpet. That's why you don't hear that many claims being made public.

Regarding real world vehicle reliability, I also found another source, it is from an independent third party warranty insurance provider, the Reliability Index complied by Warranty Direct. But again it is in the UK context. Personally these are much more reliable sources than JD Power IQS, which we have seen why it's quite misleading in an earlier post.