VAUXHALL & PROTON: WHY WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF OUR NATIONAL CAR BRAND
Years living in the Land of
the Rose, I’ve encountered so many car brands that I didn’t even know existed.
One of the brand that I would like to bring up in my story is Vauxhall, a rich
and a long history English brand with a well established manufacturing background.
Why Vauxhall? Well here in
England Vauxhall is a pure English brand, founded in 1857 and one of the oldest
established vehicle manufacturers and distribution companies in Great Britain
and has its headquarters in Luton, Bedfordshire, England[1].
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An original Proton Satria GTi 1.8 in a pristine condition spotted near the Coventry City Bus Station. Photo is of my own. All copyright reserved.
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During my stay in England, I
could never find a single Opel car on the road but instead, I noticed lots of
Vauxhall cars that have the same design with Opel models that I’ve known for
many years. At first, I thought it is a coincidence since there might be a
possibility that different make from manufacturers has the model name like its
competitor. Models like Opel Corsa, Vectra, Frontera, Astra and even the famous
European rally car Tigra, are all re-batched with the Vauxhall corporate logo on
the front grill. Plus, Vauxhall is so popular in the UK, everywhere I went, I will see the Police drives Vauxhall with Battenburg markings of blue and yellow checker stripe of various models here in the UK making me think, is Vauxhall the England national car brand?
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| Opel Astra distributed as Vauxhall Astra as used by the UK Police Force. Photo credit goes to http://gmauthority.com. |
That was until I discovered that Vauxhall is now a subsidiary of the German company Opel Automobile and Opel has the rights to distribute their German models in the UK under the Vauxhall re-batched edition. And that is quite surprising coming from the land where its people highly valued their own national heritage of car built and brand from hundreds of years ago. I can emphasise how highly proud they are of their local car makes by taking an example from the legendary British classic, Aston Martin DB5 itself. Driven personally by the first silver screen 007, Sir Sean Connery in the Dr. No film, the review that comes back from the driver of the car is that the wheels were hard to turn which in short translated as stiff handling[2]. But ignoring this one issue that is regarded as flaw by some, unique by others, Aston Martin never gave up in improvise the issue and finally in the latest Bond movie, Spectre, the same car model is seen driven with the improved version especially the handling as claimed from the manufacturer itself.
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| The iconic Aston Martin DB5. Photo credit goes to www.topgear.com. |
Then comes our Proton, our very own national car brand, despite the ups and downs throughout the history, it still remains as the pride of the nation since 1985 and still amazed me when all their cars in the UK still retain its brand name despite the tough market competition
that comes from within all the European car major manufacturers. I’ve seen so many Proton cars near Coventry
where I lived and all of them are driven as Proton by local English folks and
not a single of them being re-batched by any other brand that is not Proton. Models like
Proton's debut model Saga, Wira, Wira Aeroback, Proton Impian (or locally known as
Waja here in Malaysia), Arena, Satria, Satria GTi and even Gen2 Campro are that easy
to spot every time I do my late afternoon walk or cycling near the City Centre.
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| A chilli red Proton Gen2 1.6 Campro spotted from a window while sleeping over at my friend's house near Coventry City Centre with features exactly like any other Gen2 you can find in its home country, Malaysia. Photo is of my own. All copyrights reserved. |
Am I proud of our national car
brand? Yes, I am, except that I haven’t owned one. Not yet. I wasn’t get paid to say
this, but after years of observation living abroad, I am much more a proud man
than how I used to be of my own country home-grown national brand.
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