The Proton Savvy and Fried Mamak Mee

I like frequenting our local mamak stalls and restaurants. Most of us do actually as the food and drinks are cheap and the atmosphere very relaxed. A nice mug of teh tarik and a roti canai would do wonders especially since both items would only cost you RM3.00 and below. It’s 2011 okay, and not 1989 where you could get both items for about RM1.00.

The variety of food is also the same at a mamak eatery. You get all the usual kopi O, teh O, teh tarik, teh halia, roti canai, thosai, capati and then higher up you get the nasi kandar and nasi beryani. There may be some slight differences in taste but the quality is almost the same so you can’t go wrong most of the time. Go into a stall in Ipoh or a stall in Klang and it would cost the same and the taste is pretty much the same.

However, there are times when they do screw up. They could have fish curry cooked in a pot that has not been washed since the 1950s. They could actually be kneading the dough of the roti canai with unwashed hands and fingers after sneezing. They could actually be serving fried mamak mee that was actually fried in under 45 seconds.

Now this last incident I clearly remembered even though it happened over a decade ago. I was at the local mamak corner shop and I somehow noticed that the chap frying the noodles was chugging along in a pretty efficient manner. Too efficient if you asked me as when I started timing how long he took to whip up a plate of fried mee he managed to stop the clock at a pretty incredible 45 seconds per plate. The question that came to my mind was whether the noodles were actually cooked. I then paid attention and then noticed that the noodles only spent 30 of the 45 seconds in the wok. Needless to say I have never ordered fried mee at that mamak shop ever again.

This brings me to the Proton Savvy and the recent report of it in the local Chinese daily, the Oriental Daily News. This piece of news somehow did not appear on the usual English and Bahasa Melayu dailies (blocked by the powers that be probably). It basically stated that Proton has stopped production of the Savvy due to quality issues. It seems the car has such an appalling quality record that Proton has deemed that if it kept on producing this car it would tarnish its image (as if Proton has a fantastic image in the first place).

Anyway, they also mentioned that somehow its partnership with Renault is disappointing as the general public has not embraced French technology in Proton cars. Obviously this has some merit as the Savvy actually suffers from a lot of mechanical issues. I will get to this in a while.

Now the ironic thing about all of this is that the Savvy was the first (and probably the only) Proton to be TUV certified. Now how Proton managed to get the Savvy TUV certified is beyond comprehension of mere mortals as now they’ve claimed the car to be of ridiculously bad quality. Did they employ automotive TUV standards in the first place or TUV standards for bread making as the car was so brittle? Did they Perodua send an undercover agent that worked in Proton’s quality control department so that when Proton developed the Savvy it would never, ever be a threat to the Myvi? Did Proton engage German TUV standards from 1938? Did Renault decide that instead of building car interior parts that just disintegrate they should now design engines that do the same? ( I still think Renault builds the flimsiest European car interiors around even to this day) 

Whatever the case, The Proton Savvy has become as unloved as its predecessor, the Proton Tiara. Of course its fate isn’t as bad as the Tiara but its pretty close I suppose, whether Proton likes it or not.

Now I managed to cop a drive in one of these Proton Savvys. A 2005/6 pre-facelifted one with the ridiculous looking ‘V’ design on the rear hatch. It was basically stock with the exception of nicer looking alloy wheels and a worn out steering wheel that had small chunks missing from the top of it. It looks like the plastic used for the steering must have come from France – all croissant-like and flaky.

The rest of the interior seemed normal enough with nothing missing. The great thing about the Savvy is that the seating position is actually spot on. The steering wheel is where it should be and not resting on your thighs like in the Gen2, Waja or Satria Neo. The seats are firm without the short squab that you’d find in the Waja. The view out from the cabin is actually good and I even thought that the seat wasn’t set too high. Everything was actually good.

The Savvy I drove was a manual. This meant that I did not have to suffer the jerkiness of an Automated Manual Transmission that was offered by Proton to those who somehow cannot use a stick shift. I believe the AMT gearbox also caused Proton pain and suffering due to quality issues. So anyway, I have to say that while I like manual gearboxes, the Savvy has one with slightly vague gear placement. It isn’t a car that you can feel comfortable straight away when it comes to gear shifts, that is.

The 1.2 (actually 1,149cc – which I truly wonder why Proton calls it a 1.2liter in the first place) is pretty tractable. It is able to move the Savvy quite a bit and does not like it struggles at all. Maybe if you load up the rear with people it may feel a little lethargic but with two upfront it covers ground decently well.

It also rides like a larger car. This surprised me a little as the ride and to an extent, the handling is pretty good. It corners well and even the steering feels connected. It holds the corners quite well and you actually feel confident driving this little hatchback. It could handle another 30bhp easily (the Savvy has about 74bhp). If it had that 30bhp it would feel like a Suzuki Swift especially since it rides as well as one. But it’s a Swift with really bad material quality as well as build quality.

So that is actually what the Proton Savvy feels like. On the point of build quality the car really suffers. The chap who owns it had to spend nearly a thousand Ringgit to get the fuel pump fixed. Utterly expensive for such a budget car and Rolls Royce-like in price when you compare with a Proton Wira’s fuel pump. It also suffers from a leak in the power steering system as the owner told me he had just topped up the fluid and when I took a peep under the bonnet it was down by half again. It also suffers from low speed jerks and also high speed stutters (same problem – either fuelling caused by a dirty fuel filter or clogged injectors, or a faulty throttle body, or some vacuum leak, or God forbid, a faulty ECU which could cost more than even the older Proton Wira).

So the Proton Savvy is actually crap after you've owned it for a while. It may be a decent drive but it is actually bloody expensive to maintain for such a cheap car. This is why Proton has stopped selling it. And another incredible piece of news is that the excuse given is that they build one car every 98 seconds or 700 cars per day so quality issues are bound to happen. I suppose someone should either tell Proton that Toyota does the same in around the time the mamak fries the fried mee. No food poisoning in the case of Toyota most of the time, right?