Picto's Proton Saga Shoot

For most Malaysians, a Proton Saga is an integral part of our growing up as other local eccentrics known only to our local kids, say...erm...those white rabbit candies, learning how to brush your teeth by standing next to some drain outside your classroom, following the instruction of a nurse or even playing aci duduk. Leaving aside debates on how Proton as a company eventually became burden to all Malaysians no thanks to one misguided ex-PM, a Proton Saga is very likely to be the car you grew up with, probably the first car your family allowed you to drive in when you had your driving license. As a car, it maybe crap. But if one values a car for the sentimental value it gave you during your less prosperous younger years, then it may mean something else. Personally, the best years of my live were largely spent in one banged up white Datsun 120Y belonged to one our close buds. It was one of the only few cars available to take us anywhere during those carefree days. In many ways, that car meant a lot more to us, the group of close buds than any of our better equipped modern day cars.

Picto is a photography services start-up. For their portfolio, Picto did a series of creative shots with the theme "Proton Saga." We liked the low budget yet creative work done.

The Place We Live, The Friends We Make, and The Moments We Keep. Saga, Bridging Hearts.


Terima kasih anakku,
Membeli Saga menemaniku,
Walau kami jarang bertemu,
Mu sentiasa dekat di kalbu.


Please Car Pool.


With me through moments of joy and times of pain.


Our Saga, Our Matchmaker


My First Date(Voted Top 10, Now Exhibited in a Tour Around Malaysia)
More of their work can be found at picto.com.my or visit their Facebook page.

Driverless robotic electric vans enroute from Italy to China

Two autonomously (driverless) driven electric powered micro-mini vans are currently on their way from Italy to China. The project is attempted by Vislab, an Italian company spun off from research work done at the Italian University of Parma. The vans were sponsored by Piaggio, a company more commonly known for its scooters. But Piaggo also manufacturers small commercial vans. You can see why this is a good opportunity to show the world that Piaggio is more than just about scooters. Especially in China, where the small commercial van market is dominated by GM-Wuling.

The two autonomous electric vans will drive a total 13,000km from Parma, Italy to Shanghai, China. Barring any glitches / bad weather the convoy is expected to arrive in China by October. 4 RVs and 3 support trucks will also be part of the convoy. The autonomous vans are still not able to drive completely independent on their own, but will follow a lead van driven by a human driver. Inside each of the autonomous are two brave engineers sitting at the back seat monitoring the vehicle's progress and intervene if necessary. The convoy is currently stopping over at Budapest, Hungary. The vans will travel at 60km/h for 100km each day.


Solar panels will provide additional power to the many power hungry hardware on board.



No driver will be sitting in front throughout the journey.


You can follow the progress of the team online here. Other than the hardware onboard, not much is known about the autonomous vans. In these attempts, the software should be the main focus other than the pretty standard off the shelf hardware.


The Piaggio electric vans are not the only autonomous vehicles making headlines. Later this year, Audi of America will attempt to send a self driving Audi TTS to climb the Pikes Peak rally course. This is a far more complex attempt as the autonomous TTS will have to chart its own course on how best to climb up the Pikes Peak summit. The TTS will be guided by two main computers running Java Real Time (Jave RTS), one controlling the safety critical algo while the other runs the vehicle dynamics algo. A differential GPS system is supposed to keep the TTS within two centimeters of its mark on a normal course.



Computers and robots don't rely on visible spectrum, so let's paint the rear windscreen too.

Related link : Autonomous self-driving cars - DARPA Urban Challenge

2011 Chevrolet Captiva facelift undisguised

This was spotted with no cammo in China, one of Captiva's largest market (if not the largest). The Captiva is also sold as Daewoo Windstorm, Holden Captiva, Opel Antara and prior to GM axing the Saturn brand, was also sold in USA as the Saturn Vue. With GM selling more passenger cars in China than it does in its domestic market of North America, the Captiva, alongside its small global car brother Cruze have been a consistent strong seller in China.

But the financial roller coaster ride GM went through between 2008 and 2009 meant that development budget was tight, though GM's operations in China still remained profitable. And the result of this is quite apparent. First launched in 2006, nearly 5 years would pass before the Captiva would receive a facelift. Only the front fascia of the 2011 Captiva will be updated, while most of the car, save for some minor updates on the rear taillamp lense cluster, interior trim and engine tuning there will be minimal changes to the 2011 Captiva. Suggesting that next generation full model change Captiva can be still some years off. Still, given the very strong brand image Chevrolet has in China, the car should do fine until a major mid-life cycle facelift. Read what a colleague from China says about the Chevy brand.

UMWT to lower price of next-gen Camry? Fat chance.

“The Camry is currently assembled in Thailand and selling for between RM144,000 and RM174,000 as a CBU (completely built-up) unit. Once locally assembled, we believe this price would be brought down by at least 5% as import duty will no longer be imposed,” it (RHB Research) said.

I always wondered where do these people come from? Seriously, even salesmen who talk a lot of cocks and bulls will know that car companies (in our market at least) will almost never reduce prices on their subsequent next generation models. A 5% reduction in the selling price of a replacement model will also translate to a 5% reduction in resale value of the existing model. And bread and butter models from brands like Toyota and Honda, which boasts of very strong brand loyalty rely a lot on repeat buyers. It is not uncommon to find a Camry / Accord owner to replace his current car with another newer model Camry / Accord.

Plus, does the analyst really think that UMW Toyota is going to pass down the 5% import duty saving to consumers? Who is going to pay for the RM 100 million investment to refurbish the ASSB plant? The charity of UMW shareholders?

You may see prices reduced in newer models when studying developed / saturated automotive markets. In Australia, selling price of the facelifted Nissan Latio (Tiida) was reduced by at least AUD 1,000 across the model range, in a bid to arrest stagnanting sales of the slow selling Tiida. But that is in a market where 1 in 2 person already owns a car. And population growth has stabilized. While in Malaysia, it's more like 1 in 4 person owns a car, in a developing country. But as a general rule of thumb, car prices hardly ever comes down unless it is the result of an industry wide regulation change.

Else, lowering prices of new models only reduce the existing model's resale value, making phasing out of existing stock by dealers a lot more difficult (require costly rebates / discounts), affects the brand value and at worst it could actually spark off a race-to-the-bottom price war which will benefit nobody. Price wars when carefully managed may work in services sector like telco or even FMCG products but very rarely do they work for cars. In the late 90s, the Taiwanese operations of Ford and Mitsubishi used to have some very serious price wars for the Lancer and Focus, when dealers started slashing prices and giving out huge discounts for the two new models. The only one who benefitted from the price war was Toyota, which held its price and ground but went on a brand building marketing blitz and shot past both Mitsubishi and Ford, who used to hold top spots in the sales charts. Both Mitsubishi and Ford never require recovered from their seriously damaged brand value. Taiwanese consumers can no longer accept a higher priced Ford or Mitsubishi.

Toyota revives electric RAV4 with Tesla

Apparently, Toyota will embark on some full-electric SUVs model blitz starting from 2012, with the American market first. Toyota have confirmed that it will be producing an all electric version of the RAV4 in 2012, with Tesla Motors providing the EV powertrain. Presumably this would also hint that the next generation RAV4 is due by 2012 or earlier.

An all electric version of the Lexus RX SUV is also said to be in works. Again of course this refers to the next generation model.

This however is not the first electric RAV4. Back in the late 90s, the first generation RAV4 was available in California, certain parts of UK and Japan but only on a leasing basis.


Besides owning 3.2% of Tesla Motors, Tesla also recently bought over the abandoned GM-Toyota joint venture NUMMI plant in Fremont, California. The NUMMI plant will be adapted to produce the Tesla S electric sedan.

Related link : The great powertrain debate - diesel vs hybrid

University professor takes on Toyota. Toyota threw fits and withdraws university funding.

This is a story of a university professor, who literally applied what he has learned in academic into the real world. And along the way he made Big T, the big Toyota upset. Very very upset. David W. Gilbert, PhD is a professor of automotive technology in Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). Gilbert is an owner of 2010 Toyota Tundra, one of the models affected by Toyota's recall for "sticky accelerator pedal." The growing concern on Toyota vehicle quality prompted him to do some investigation on his own. While Toyota have always maintained that the problem of sudden acceleration is a mechanical issue and is not related to electronics, Professor Gilbert thought otherwise.

My curiosity in the Toyota electronic throttle control system began simply with a search for the truth concerning sudden unintended acceleration. I recently purchased a 2010 Toyota Tundra, and with the growing attention in the media to what seemed to be increasing events of sudden unintended acceleration, I made the decision to investigate the foundation of these claims on my own. Based on my working knowledge of electronic throttle controls, I did not expect to the system to be easily fooled without detecting a circuit fault and setting a diagnostic trouble code. It was late one evening when I made a startling discovery; electrical circuit faults could be introduced into the electronic throttle control system without setting a diagnostic trouble code. This discovery opened a window of opportunity within the electronic throttle control system for a potential problem with no code.

Without a diagnostic trouble code set, the vehicle computer will not logically enter
into a fail‐safe mode of operation. All vehicle manufacturers have recognized the
importance for electronic throttle control systems to perform exactly as they intended. Read more of David Gilbert's testimony to the US Federal government during the congressional hearing here.

Toyota have since withdrawn funding to the university, and in an email obtained by Associated Press, Toyota contacted the university chancellor, reminding him of Toyota's annual $100,000 donation to the university programmes, and demanding to know how can one of its professors be allowed be criticise the company openly and even suggested that he should not be employed by the university. Fortunately the chancellor replied that "faculty are allowed to research independently and publish their findings, while observing ethical and conflict-of-interest guidelines."

Toyota has even sent its lawyers to meet up with Dirk Gilbert, which Gilbert says was a move to intimidate him. But Dilbert stood firm by his testimony, and commented "it seemed like an awful large amount of effort to be extended by a company to dispel something." Which begs the question why try so hard to silence someone if the company is sure that it is not true? It is a bad PR move, and between the university and Toyota, the public is more likely to trust that the good professor than Big T. Although detractors might argue that Gilbert might be an opportunist seeking compensation for the loss of value of his Tundra truck. But to me, even if that is true, so what? His selfish interest does not in anyway redeem Toyota from the crime of covering up known critical defects, which in Gilbert's limited capacity as a third party, have been able to replicate the faults and back them up with sound technical evidence.

Read more here.

To date, the "smoking gun" evidence pointing to the root cause of Toyota's sudden acceleration has yet to be found.

What women want from a car?

What does women want? The bigggest TOE (theory of everything) question in the universe. On a smaller, more manageable scale, what does women want from a car? According to Perodua it's pink colour, floral design themes and a vanity mirror.

Apparently it's targeted at young urban females. And the wife's first comment upon seeing this - "What? Does Perodua thinks all women are cutesy and stupid? It's either they listen to a lot of stupid women. Or the company is run by men who are hopeless at home and does not understand women." LOL.

Look, teenage girls may want cutesy dangling things. Japanese girls and some Asian girls may like that "Kawai-ey" pose. But when it comes to high priced purchases like cars, women want everything that men want - and then more. Any men that have a decent understanding of women knows this. The only difference in purchases made by women is that they may place higher importance in more rational / pragmatic areas, as compared to men whom sad to say are often quite stupid and let their balls drive their purchases - gaya ma. How else would one explain that Myvi running around with 4 exhaust pipes sticking out? One for each cylinder? Or those that are quite proud with coverting their Myvi into a Toyota Passo look-alike?

If there is anything to be learned over the last 10 years or so of car makers trying to tap the growing female market, it is that women DON'T want an overly feminine car. Take the previous generation Nissan Micra / March for example, the car literally screams of oestrogen and progesterone.


It did sell relatively well in Europe, predominantly to women buyers of course. Until you look at the bigger picture - the best sellers in the European market supermini segment like Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa, Peugeot 207 and even VW Polo, all of which are even more popular amongst women buyers, it becomes apparent that maybe the market potential of the Micra / March is hampered by its overly feminine looks. Which explains why for the new Micra / March, Nissan reverted to a more gender-neutral design.


It's the same story with the VW New Beetle. While the original Ferdinand Porsche design was a gender neutral vehicle, the New Beetle looked like some automotive translation of Miley Cyrus. Compared that to the MINI. While the MINI did not stay true to its original philosophy of being an affordable and highly space efficient vehicle, it did appeal to both men and women, just like the original designed penned by the late Sir Alec Issigonis. Needless to say, the sales of the new MINI kept climbing until it went off the scale. Sales were so good that BMW didn't see a need to change the design after all these years, after 2 generations of MINI. When you've hit the sweet spot, don't do anything stupid to fix a non-issue. Celebrities, hair stylists, bankers, lawyers, students, footballers, everyone be it male or female wanted one. VW could not hope to achieve that with the girlie looking New Beetle.

VW has learnt its lesson and this is also why the next generation Beetle will be redesigned to also be gender-neutral. The next generation Beetle is rumoured to be launched by 2011 but little is known about it so far, it is a very well kept secret by VW. Although VW have already dropped hints that the car will have a mass market appeal, aspiring to transcend all social classes / demographics.


"We are confident that the 1.3L Myvi LE will appeal to the young and urban female buyers. We also understand that lady drivers place great importance on having the vanity mirror in their car. Therefore we have added a vanity mirror on the driver's side as well," Perodua MD En Aminar Rashid Salleh.

To actually mention on the inclusion of a driver side vanity mirror only highlights the omission of a very low cost item in the other Myvi range, though it is not frequently used feature. What's wrong with a guy expecting my car to have a driver side vanity mirror? "After paying so much don't I deserve a bloody mirror thrown in as standard? It's nobody's business whether do I use it or not." That's what a regular bloke will tell you. There is nothing special about including something that should have been a standard feature in the first place (which now we know is not) and it is certainly not some profound new discovery to find out that women (and sometimes men) use vanity mirrors.

A mainsteam model like a Myvi will not benefit from having a variant targetted solely towards one particular gender. It's really not that different from the other variants and neither does it really meet serious needs of women. It only clutters up the model image perception by the general public. Not mention increasing your market entry cost. Below is a good example of a car targetted at young urban female audience while not driving away the blokes. This was by Mazda Australia, for the Mazda2 hatch. It's splashed all over Aussie women mags.

Same impact to the young urban female audience. Much more hip. Looks a lot less stupid.

The blokes still see the same car, same colour, in a more spirited "Zoom-Zoom" fun to drive theme in men's magazines.

Having said all that, the Myvi LE will continue to relatively well received. It's not like buyers have a lot of option within that price range anyway. This author suspects that the Myvi LE is created as a campaign model to drum of interest in the Myvi, which have been losing quite a bit of sales to its MPV cousin the Alza. The role of the Myvi is to arrest the sales cannibalization between Alza-Myvi. It is a so-called limited edition, with no specific mention on it being limited to how many units. Technically. every manufactured product is limited. You can run the product right up to the end of its lifecycle and still call it a limited edition model.

As a product, the LE is a relatively decent but the overly stereotypical marketing approach is a bit annoying. It's not like the LE is that different from the rest of the model variants anyway. They could have just advertise the new pink colour scheme, in a slightly more gender neutral manner, in women focused media and I think it would have done just fine. But of course, some will say that's just what I think.

If anyone wants to build a car that women appreciates, then make it :
a) Fuel efficient
b) Easy to park with audio or even visual parking assistance
c) Ergonomically designed place and safe place (covered) to keep their handbags in the front passenger side
d) "Shoe box" friendly boot organizer
e) Console box design that is suitable to keep cosmetic cases
f) Long service interval
g) Powerful air-conditioning
h) Keyless entry / Smart Entry - have you ever tried finding keys in a women's handbag?
i) Security features like an option to only unlock the driver's door rather than all doors (have you noticed how quickly women need to lock their car doors once they get in? And make the car turn on all interior and exterior lights when unlocking so the vehicle surrounding is clearly lit
j) Make it easy to mount air freshers or deodorizers, or better still, integrate them with the air-con vents
k) And lastly, make that headrest to be more long hair / pony-tail friendly

You can figure all these out just by paying attention to the women around you! Not listening to male managers. To add some girlie colours, floral themes in the interior and a vanity mirror and call it designed with women in mind is pushing things a bit too far towards the shallow thinking end.

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.