The soon-to-be-outgoing Proton Saga is now locally-assembled in Egypt.
While most of the automotive media buzz around the Proton Saga has been on spyshots of the upcoming ‘Saga MC3’ update, late last week we came across a press release about another Saga story – one involving exports. The long and short of it is this: the Proton Saga used to be exported to Egypt from Malaysia for sale as a CBU vehicle there, now there is a local assembly facility there with partners Ezz Elarab.
We congratulate Proton on this significant milestone and the sustained growth of their exports, but we have concerns around the timing and long term strategy. The Proton Saga that is now being assembled in Egypt has been on sale in Malaysia since its introduction around Q3 2019. With the MC3 update around the corner and more than 5 years ‘under its wheels’, wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait a couple of months and do CKD operations of the MC3 version in Egypt?
Maybe logistically and from a purely financial standpoint this was the best move – the current Saga is selling well in Egypt and pricing and appeal will be bolstered with CKD there even if a newer version is known to be in the pipeline. We can’t help but feel like Egypt is getting the kind of deal from Malaysia as Malaysia sometimes gets from China or Korea.
Take the current Hyundai Santa Fe. It’s an excellent, EXCELLENT product. Comfortable, large, efficient (nearly 1000km of driving range on a full tank on both the hybrid AND diesel), powerful, decently equipped and good looking. However it was introduced in CKD form here only after the reveal of an extensively facelifted version was shown. No matter what you say about the Santa Fe we get, it leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth that Malaysia is getting the older version.
Closer to home, we have Proton’s own experience with Geely to lean on. The X70 and X50 models were introduced to Malaysia at the tail end of their own domestic lifecycles as Geely products. Both the Geely Boyue and the Binyue were thoroughly facelifted and updated in China during the course of their sale in Malaysia in Proton form. Even with the various updates Proton has given these cars over the years, it still feels out of lockstep with Geely’s overall product strategy.
Proton themselves are guilty of holding on to models far too long, but we don’t want to detract too much from the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that car enthusiasts in Egypt may now look at Proton with more scrutiny as a result of this. Our hope is that the CKD operations were set up with the current Saga model just to make sure that things on the ground run smoothly with a familiar product and that the upcoming NEW Saga is quickly introduced in Egypt as part of this CKD operation.
