Earlier this month, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely) and its wholly owned subsidiary Volvo Car Group (Volvo) made an announcement.
They intend to merge their existing combustion engine operations in order to establish a world leading business unit that will seek to develop next generation combustion engine and hybrid systems.
This is great news for Proton as Geely owns part of Proton and this merged engine operations will bring Volvo technology engines to future Protons.
At the moment the only Geely product sold with a Proton badge is the Proton X70 and this SUV does not have an engine jointly developed with Volvo.
This confirms that the Proton X70 SUV is not a product of Volvo rebadged as a Proton for the domestic market.
The Proton X70 is in fact a product of Geely using a Geely produced engine and interior with only design input from Volvo.
The reason for this confusion is because most Malaysian car buyers do not read the information provided by Malaysian online car portals and instead they believe what the car sales person tell them in the showroom to close the sale.
Mystery shoppers have walked into a rebranded Proton dealership pretending to be Proton X70 buyers.
At the end of the sales pitch, they have been informed by the sales person that the Proton X70 is a Volvo engineered product made in China for Geely and exported to Malaysia as a Proton to get preferred pricing.
This is false information and many Malaysians have bought the Proton X70 based on this falsehood.
The Proton X70 is a good product as stated in our review early this year, where DSF gave it a 100% honest thumbs up.
The Geely engineers have done a good job with the chassis, powertrain, handling and the interior build quality and the features are as good as any Japanese or Korean SUV sold in the same price range.
But, the Proton X70 SUV does not have a Volvo engine, gearbox or 4×4 system and this is a fact.
If you have been fooled by a Proton sales person then you should take it up with their management to set things right. This is false advertising and it is neither good for customers nor the brand in the long run.
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