Friday, July 25, 2008

More Whining On Cars!?

I am not sure whether to laugh or to be serious on this.

The Terengganu state government ditches the Proton Perdana V6 in favor of a Mercedes E 200 Kompressor. That simply is a slap to Proton's face or in other words that is violating the BN policy of using Proton cars. And this shows the wolf in the sheep's clothing. But little have they forgotten that the money used is not their own money, but the people's money - state level money and spending a few hundred thousand more on a car.

Let's see, buying a Mercedes here is like robbing people. The actual price of buying a Mercedes of this model is about $250K (calculating together with sales tax and actual conversion from either EURO or USD), but the final price here is about doubled because of the import duty levied by Customs department, so the final price is at RM400K to 500K. If I buy a Proton Perdana, I'd pay XXXXX and that's never includes import duty.

Yes, the cost to maintain a Proton car is quite high simply because of the frequency of times required to take the car to a workshop to do the maintenance job. But if you do that in a BMW / or whatever workshop, the cost to do one time is high but the frequency number of times required to do so is quite seldom - and you actually save a lot of money. Maybe you need to do a maintenance once every 10000 km or 20000km, depending on motor oil type and oil filter used.

First batches of new Proton cars tend to show many signs of problems, despite having an excellent air-condition system. My mother has been driving a hunch Proton Saga for the last seven years and running; the thing that she often laments is always the car making unusual sounds. The first car that I drove was a Toyota Corolla 1.3 LE. The car is almost at my age right now and it served me well for two years before I changed to my current car. It performed well when driving at town but of course it didn't do well at highways so I changed it. But what impressed me is that I didn't really spend much on doing maintenance just like those Proton cars.

I just simply agreed with Mat Sabu's warning. It's clearly a reminder that the money that is used is not their own but people's money. But I figured that people's money could have been saved if the import duty is reduced tremendously. Maybe getting a Toyota Camry would be the better alternative. It costs less and it performs well as Mercedes. Why do they need Mercedes to go up and down? To show how prestige they are or what?

The bottom line? Proton needs to improve their defects. And now, Customs Department need to reduce import duties for buying other cars. Maybe 10 percent would do... It's inflation right now and not reducing that kind of price is like robbing the people some more, makes people hard to get favorite cars.

And I just loved the latest flip-flop by Abdullah Badawi. Usually, it's a must to buy Proton cars but ooh...now giving exception to Ahmad Said behaving as if he is above the law and being king...but hey he's gone above the line of the Agong!!!

Boy, if I just get to run as Prime Minister for one day alone, I would be turning things upside down. APs, cut import duties..hahaha.

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