The Wira experience

My company is playing host to a few foreign visitors. As they would be here for a few weeks, they rented themselves a car - a Proton Wira with automatic transmission.

On the second day, I sat in the car with them as they were still not sure how to get to the office. As our office is on higher ground, we had to drive through roads that was slightly sloped. Then it happened... The car started to jerk and my foreign visitor shifted to L (for Low gear). But we could sense that the Wira was really struggling to climb that road. There were only 4 of us in the car.

Anyway, we managed to get to office but my visitors were clearly not too happy with the car they had rented. They felt it was under-powered and not really that safe. They asked us to help them get the car exchanged.

After a few phone calls and a bit of negotiations, my colleague managed to get them a Toyota Altis. This time, my foreign visitors were already a bit skeptical about rented cars. They said they wanted to take the car for a spin before accepting it. After 1 round, they had a discussion and we found out later that they said the Toyota Altis was at least 10 times better than the Proton Wira.

Then one of them turned to my colleague and asked "Was the first car they had (Proton Wira) made in China?"

Arrgggh...!!! Paiseh, paiseh... Sia-sui only (paiseh means embarrassing in hokkien; siasui means disgraceful in hokkien). My colleague didn't know whether to tell them that the Proton Wira was made in Malaysia or not, so she just smiled at them...

No offense to the Chinese, but many have bad impression of 'Made in China' products -- cheap but does not last. Still, I guess this encounter only shows Malaysia is not that far off.

I know some of you might say that its the car rental company's fault for not maintaining the car...

Labels: misc

Please leave your comments. There are 4 comment(s).

On 6/01/2007 12:04:00 PM Anonymous said:
Perhaps the driver forgot to turn off the air-cond.

Anyhow, Malaysia boleh, and in view of competing globally, Malaysia needs to start churning cheaplak-QC stuffs. QC means Quality Cancelled. :D

Proton always have this QC checked sticker. ;)

On a brighter note, at least your visitors didn't think the car was made in a jungle clearing that the TopGear people are so fondly of postulating.

On 6/01/2007 12:06:00 PM Anonymous said:
Also, in such incident, you should mention this:

"chiu tai lang, keng kau siu" :P

On 6/05/2007 10:31:00 AM adriantai said:
to be honest, i dun see anything wrong with the Tanjung Malim plant being referred to as jungle clearing... most of Malaysia is jungle clearing anyway. lots of countries, cities and towns started as jungle, right? :)

ya... having used a Proton Waja for 7 years now (because cannot afford to buy another car), i think Proton deserves to be sold off. they people in there never heard of vendor audit or vendor KPIs?!? how can it be normal to have power window failt just after 1-2 years?!?

On 6/05/2007 10:31:00 AM adriantai said:
speaking of power windows... ya... i was actually worried my visitors wanted to smell Malaysian air and used the power window... hahahaha... no kidding. i was really worried!

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