He told participants at the annual Nikkei conference in Tokyo that he had started Proton in hopes that the company would remain under local ownership.
“Now it’s been sold to a Chinese company, so it is no longer a national car.
“Our ambition is to start another national car, perhaps with the help of partners from Southeast Asia like Thailand, Japan or Korea, as they have the capacity to produce good quality cars saleable in the world market,” he said.
Last year, China’s Zhejiang Geely acquired a 49.9% stake in Proton in a deal supported by the previous government.
The move drew strong protest from Mahathir, who a year earlier gave up his advisory post in the company after a fallout with then-prime minister Najib Razak.
Just hours after the announcement that DRB-Hicom was selling the stake to Geely, he said Malaysia had lost a national icon and that Proton would now be a foreign brand.
Following Pakatan Harapan’s victory in the May 9 election, Mahathir said the new government had no intention of buying Proton back from Geely.
He said the company belonged to tycoon Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, and that whether he wanted to buy it back or not depended on him.
Proton, which was established by Mahathir in 1983, was still seen as a national carmaker even after coming under private ownership by the DRB-Hicom group in 2012.
At its peak, Proton dominated local automobile sales with the bulk of new passenger cars sold coming from its factories. Over the past 15 years, however, it fell behind other brands such as Perodua, Toyota and Honda.