Proton Suffers Blow, Recalls all Savvy

Malaysian car manufacturer, Proton Holdings Bhd has issued a statement to recall the Proton Savvy cars. Launched in the second quarter of 2005, there are currently there are more than 34,000 on the road. Proton has cited that the cars have a faulty rear wheel-bearing component. This means that the fault would create a problem whereby water could enter the rear wheel-bearing housing, eventually causing the component to malfunction.

This was done during a random check on the car and according to Managing Director Datuk Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohd Tahir “As a precautionary measure, we are recalling all Savvys for inspection and repair. We apologise to all Savvy owners for any inconvenience caused”.

Seen as a major blow to the national car maker which in recent years have observed drop in sales and efforts to try and close the competition gap with second national car maker and marker leader Perodua who is holding a 31.8 per cent market share while Proton is holding only 25.5 per cent as at February. Proton has since posted a net profit of RM10.3 million in its third quarter ending on December 31 2007 after it made a loss of RM281 million in the same period in 2006.

So far, there has not been any additional information released by Proton but it is known that the component will range from RM150 to RM200 each. One should note that, this is not the first time such a case had happened as Proton recalled almost 3000 Wajas in 2005 citing faulty alloy wheels as the problem. They have since advised all Savvy owners to send their vehicle for check ups and component change at their network of Proton Edar and EON service branches free of charge.