Proton hasn't really had a good track record at building a small car. In its nearly 30 years of existence, it actually only made two. The Tiara, launched in 1996, was based on the ageing Citroën AX (which by then was already reaching its 10th year on the market) and was saddled with the usual French reliability problems. The car was discontinued after just four years due to low demand.
Looking to right those wrongs, the company introduced the Savvy in 2005 (famously, it was launched barely a month after the Perodua Myvi, which went on to become Malaysia's most popular car). Proton spent a great deal of effort to banish its reputation of poor quality with this car – even going so far as to getting the Savvy audited by the TÜV Rheinland Group – but hobbled it by failing to provide a proper automatic option, as the sole self-shifting 'box was a Renault-sourced automated manual transmission.
Since then, Proton has pretty much stayed off Perodua's turf, a domain Malaysia's second national carmaker dominated from the start. Sure, there is the Saga, which sells at under the RM50k mark. But it's a sedan, and the prices it commands straddle between those of the Axia and the Myvi.
But now there's the new Proton Iriz, developed and priced squarely to compete against the Myvi in both specs and price. It's hard not to be impressed by the company's ambitions – the car has apparently been benchmarked against the Ford Fiesta and the VW Polo, the latter in particular in terms of build quality. But does it all add up? We take a (very) short drive on the roads near the Tanjung Malim plant to find out.
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