Akhirnya secara rasminya Pasukan Lotus-Renault disahkan bakal berentap dalam F1 musim depan. Ini merupakan pasukan ke-3 dalam F1 dari Malaysia, selepas pasukan Mercedes GP Petronas & Lotus Racing. Kerjasama dalam F1 ini bukan semata-mata memberi keuntungan kepada Lotus dari segi penajaan & penjenamaan tetapi secara tak langsung Proton juga bakal menjalinkan pakatan strategik dengan Renault di masa akan datang dalam pembangunan model & teknologi baru. Selain itu Proton juga mendapat akses kepada teknologi terkini dalam F1.
Yang paling bengang dengan berita ini tentulah Tony Fernandes, sebab tak dapat guna nama Lotus & terkini warna yang akan digunakan oleh Pasukan Lotus-Renault ialah warna hitam + emas, iaitu warna ikoniknya semasa zaman kegemilangan Lotus dulu..siap diorang buat contest kat web lagi, last2 kena lagi..nasib kau la Tony, hehehe… 🙂
sumber : worldcarfans.com
funtasticko design 
08/12/2010 at 8:37 pm
mesti contest tu xde orang yg menang sebab Tony & gang akan tukar colour scheme lepas ni..xpun maintain je la warna yang ada, sebab Lotus xguna pun warna tu..cadangan saya Tony pkai warna Air Asia, merah + putih atau buat warna kuning emas mcam jersi bola Malaysia, stripe hitam..barulah team Malaysia..tak gitu 🙂
09/12/2010 at 8:16 am
Better Tony Fernandes jual hak nama Lotus team tu kat proton dan buat agreement baru sponsor Lotus Renault. jadi AirAsia dan Tune company boleh iklan free. Dua-dua dapat hasil. Sekarang ni menang jadi arang, kalah jadi abu. Silap2 john player Speacial pulak saman sebab guna colour scheme corporate mereka.
Tapi berapa Proton belanja melalui Lotus nak dapatkan stake dalam Genii ni? yang nampaknya sekarang JV Proton-Lotus-Genii dan bukannya Renault. renault just supply enjin. Genii ni ada expertise dalam brake system, KERS system, software untuk automotive dan paling penting ada cable di Russia. maknanya proton nak gunakan platform Genii ni untuk technology transfer dan penetrate fast emerging russia market. lepas ni boleh la kita tengok left hand drive proton di Russia dan central Europe. Kalau macam ni bagus. Renault dah jual habis share dalam team F1 ni dan hanya bekalkan enjin sahaja.
08/12/2010 at 8:57 pm
oo jadi dah pasti proton beli stakes ye.. aha… mmg hot.. 2 lotus terpaksa bersaing.. aku sokong lotus proton ni lah… yg lotus tony tu sokong no 2.. hahaha.
08/12/2010 at 8:59 pm
Campro.. silap sikit.. bukan 2 pasukan… tapi 3 pasukan yg ada kaitan dgn malaysia.. team lotus tony , lotus renault.. dan petronas. giler aa banyak duit.. cuba masuk forum2 F1 . depa siap buat poll lagi. banyak yg nak sokong team lotus fernandez dan marah kat proton/group lotus. hahaha.
08/12/2010 at 9:00 pm
jap, nak betulkan ayat tu skit..
08/12/2010 at 9:15 pm
PETALING JAYA, Dec 8 (Bernama) — Proton, whose subsidiary Group Lotus Plc will acquire a major stake in Renault F1 team from Genii Capital, is also set to benefit immensely from the deal by gaining access to Russia’s automotive market and automotive technologies owned by Genii.
The partnership also provides a platform for closer technological collaborations between Group Lotus, Genii Capital, the Luxembourg-based investment firm with a portfolio of automotive technologies, and Proton.
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Proton ada peluang dpat teknologi renault, Genii Rusiia.. serta market Russia.. ok lah camtu.
08/12/2010 at 9:28 pm
aku rasa team lotus-renault ni la yang “real” nya…. team tony tu nama je lotus… dia ambil alih pasukan lotus team (maaf kalau aku tersilap nama team) yang tak ada kena mengena ngan lotus sebenarnya… tapi aku rasa proton/lotus buat gitu sebab bengang kat Tony kut… terlampau banyak akses ke kilang lotus walaupun dia tak ada equity pun dalam saham Proton… dia buat cam Lotus tu dia punya lak… Hahhh ambik ko… Tony lak nak hak nama Lotus sampai masuk mahkamah… yang menang… Proton!
08/12/2010 at 9:30 pm
confirm ke Proton yg menang hak tu bro?
09/12/2010 at 4:43 am
mana ada konfom apa2 pun “tayar kitar semula pening tuh” . mahkamah akan bersidang january nih.. tengokla apa akan jadi.
10/12/2010 at 12:06 pm
ahak… aku tersilap kut.. tak teringat baca artikel kat mana… sorry beb!
08/12/2010 at 10:06 pm
http://www.worksmanagement.co.uk/article/29984/Lotus-the-manufacturer-is-back.aspx
In addition to the F1 deal, Genii is also offering Proton the opportunity to exploit its existing business relationships in Russia and other parts of the world, as a means to expand Proton’s global reach. Through Genii, Proton can also potentially access advanced automotive technologies by virtue of Genii’s association with Mangrove, a venture capital group.
Gerard Lopez, founding partner of Genii Capital, said: “For Group Lotus, access to Formula 1 opens up new marketing opportunities and a major platform for business exchanges and development. In this regard, Genii Capital possesses shareholdings in, and direct access to, cutting edge companies in the automotive industry. Our tie-up with Group Lotus and Proton, which will enable its future road car ranges to take advantage of significant new technologies, is a natural step.”
09/12/2010 at 12:35 am
fuh dunia mencabar kt russia ni.. harap dpt bgnkan seswatu hasil dari penerokaan pasaran russia tu.. all the best p1!
08/12/2010 at 10:07 pm
Genii ni apa kepakaran mereka aa?
09/12/2010 at 10:18 am
Mari kita belajar sejarah lagi.
The Proton Saga Saga
Share this: Issue 195
new internationalist
issue 195 – May 1989
The Proton Saga saga
Malaysia dreamed of leaping into the big league of industrial nations by making
its own car – the Proton Saga. Halinah Todd describes what happened.
Chung Koh Sing got a bulging gift-hamper last January from Malaysia’s State-supported car company, Proton. She was the proud owner of the 100,000th Proton Saga. It was an event which was supposed to have happened three years ago.
‘Critics laughed at the Prime Minister’s programme, saying the project was not viable. Now the Government is laughing at them,’ said Deputy Prime Minister, Ghafar Baba.
The Government may be laughing, but few Malaysians are forgetting the cost of inching this State-owned business out of the red. Taxpayers have shelled out more than $200 million so that one per cent of the country’s 15 million people can drive a Malaysian car.
The Malaysian ‘National Car Project’ grew out of a romance with heavy industry that began in the early 1980s, Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed was convinced Malaysia could make a quantum leap into the twenty-first century if the South-east Asian nation could buy into a series of industrial mega-projects.
The problem was that the Prime Minister’s schemes – including steel plants, cement factories and petrochemical complexes, along with the ‘national car’ – seemed uncannily to match those products facing a world-wide glut.
All required huge capital investment, employed few Malaysians and depended heavily on foreign expertise. In each case the Malaysian Government has ended up holding the equity (and therefore the losses) while the Japanese have walked off with the lucrative supply and building contracts that made up most of their cost. And far from stimulating industrial growth, existing private-sector companies were badly hit by the arrival of a protected and favoured Government competitor.
Since September, 1985, when Dr Mahathir drove the first Proton Saga off the assembly-line in a burst of ribbons, balloons and TV cameras, the national car project has been closest to his heart.
The plant and the technical expertise came from Mitsubishi. The Japanese company provided 70 per cent of the capital in the form of yen loans and took 30 per cent of the equity. The car project was promoted as a major step to becoming an industrial nation. It was to ‘generate vast opportunities for the development of supporting and ancillary industries . . . accelerate the development of local components and stimulate the plastics, rubber, aluminium and metal industries.’
When the first Proton appeared on Malaysian roads, local wits promptly dubbed it the ‘Proton Harga’, meaning the cut-price’ Proton. And for good reason. The Proton was at least $1,000 cheaper than the equivalent makes in the same 1.3 to 1.5 litre class. With both the price and a dash of national pride working for it, the Proton got a rapid hold on the market. By 1988 the Proton had overtaken all other makes and grabbed 73 per cent of the passenger car market.
The only problem was that the market had shrivelled. Each year the pie shrank further, and the Proton’s share grew bigger. In 1983, when the ‘national car’ had been planned, Malaysia was selling nearly 100,000 cars a year and the market was growing annually by 20 per cent. The Proton plant was designed to turn out 80,000 units a year and could gear up to 120,000 units. But in the Proton’s first year of production, national car sales dropped by half to 47,000. The next year was worse – 35,000. Only last year did the market begin a slow pick-up to 54,000 units, by now most of them Protons.
Government policy has kept the Proton cheaper than other makes by the simple strategy of taxing the hell out of the competition. Duties on packages of parts for assembly into complete cars in Malaysia are around 150 per cent. Proton is exempted from most of these.
Unfortunately, since the Proton project began, the yen has risen 80 per cent against Malaysia’s currency, the ringgit. So even the Proton’s price has almost doubled in the past five years. The cheapest 1.3 litre Proton costs $9,900 (the country’s median income is about $3,300). Competing models cost well over $11,000. You can buy a house in Malaysia cheaper than you can buy a car.
The Proton is an elegant, upmarket car; few Malaysians can ever hope to own one. Yet Government spending on the transport system is skewed overwhelmingly towards the tiny minority of car owners. Despite the recession, substantial funds have been spent on highways, and nearly $200 million has gone into the Proton.
There are only 1.3 million car owners in Malaysia. But the five-year development plan which began in 1986 allocated $2.8 billion to building new roads and bridges. The railways, which service seven million passengers a year, got only $400 million, most of which got the axe when the Government was forced to cut spending during the recession. Bus transport is irregular, crowded and uncomfortable. A mass rapid-transport system to serve the urban corridor which links the capital, Kuala Lumpur to its port has been shelved as too expensive.
When Dr Mahathir drove a shiny new Proton over the Penang Bridge to celebrate its completion, he brought together two potent symbols of ‘modernity’, Malaysian-style. The Penang Bridge is the longest in Asia, not much used, but a truly international status symbol. Less noticeable indicators of modern life – like piped water and access to health care get less attention from elitist policy makers. The Government plans to spend six times as much on bridges as rural water supplies, health clinics and hospitals. The gross neglect of the public transport systems used by most Malaysians came home with a crash last year when part of Penang’s ageing ferry terminal collapsed, killing more than 30 people.
The shrinking of the car market made the shake-out in the ranks of competitors to the Proton especially brutal. A company like Tan Chong, which, before the Proton, sold over 20,000 Nissan cars, now sells less than 3,000. Proton employed 1,300 people in its plant; but 6,500 workers were laid off by the other assemblers.
This ‘rationalization’ of the car industry was expected. The argument goes like this: better only two or three car-makers, using local parts, exercising economies of scale, than a whole line of screwdriver assemblers.
When the Proton management despaired of ever making money in the local market they began to dream of exports. The most ambitious deal was signed with Bricklin of the US – 100,000 Protons a year over the next decade. Proton even promised to use the abandoned capacity of the other assemblers to help it achieve its goal.
In the US, car industry analysts expressed doubts about Bricklin’s abilities to make the deal work, since hundreds of changes had to be made in the car to conform to the demanding safety standards of the American market. In Malaysia, organizations like the Consumers Association of Penang, remarked on the irony of a Third World country subsidizing a cheap car for American consumers. Despite the expensive modifications, Proton’s strategy was to sell the car in the US for substantially less than it sold in Malaysia.
The agreement collapsed earlier this year, reportedly scuttled by Proton’s new Japanese management. The Malaysian car is now managed by Mitsubishi executives, appointed by Dr Mahathir in an overhaul of all the troubled heavy-industry projects announced late last year.
By then Proton had accumulated losses of over $36 million and was running at only a third of capacity. Most of its losses were coming from the crippling burden of yen loans, which had doubled in ringgit value. In 1988 Proton was $247 million in debt. Malaysia’s heavy debt load, for which heavy industry projects are largely responsible, has forced severe cutbacks on all Government spending in the past three years, including spending on public transport, health and education.
The timing was perfect for Mitsubishi, which from being a minor player in the Japanese market now has the protected lion’s share of the Malaysian market. This year will undoubtedly be the year Proton turns around. Even though they are still well below 1983 levels, new car sates are on the upswing and Proton expects to corner 80 per cent of the market.
Ironically, the current resurgence in manufacturing supports those who argued that Malaysia’s real future lies in smaller industries based on local resources. Instead of industrial mega-projects, the country should look for export niches in medium-tech products – condoms and rubber gloves rather than steel and petrochemicals.
The tragedy is that an enormous amount of money and effort were poured into a high-tech car industry while other more appropriate forms of transport were ignored. What would have happened if the effort had been put into producing a cheap, basic car (better still, a cheap basic van) that street-vendors and farmers could afford? Or better still if an efficient public transport system had been created for the majority of the population who will never be able to own a car?
Critics like economist Yu Soengjae are blunt. Professor Yu, the author of a widely-admired (and mostly ignored) strategy for Malaysian industrialization published two years ago, says the best course would have been to encourage existing car component producers and forget Dr Mahathir’s deluded dream of a national car.
Says Dr Yu: ‘Malaysia has wasted its time in the car industry’.
Halinah Todd is a Malaysian journalist now editing Utusan Konsumer, the fortnightly magazine of the Consumers’ Association of Penang.
09/12/2010 at 11:27 am
adoii…penat nak baca..
11/12/2010 at 6:50 pm
bro ni artikel br ke lame punyer?
syok baca, kata2 late ghafar baba pun ader
09/12/2010 at 1:50 pm
09/12/2010 at 2:03 pm
tadi saya masuk forum egypt ada jumpa maklumat nih…
http://www.nissan-arabia.com/vb/showthread.php?t=56539&page=1
saudi rebadge Proton ?? pelik gak sbb takder berita pun sebelum nih.. tetiba je dapat berita ni kat forum mesir. Comey tak keter tu?
09/12/2010 at 2:13 pm
menarik tu, Persona lampu Neo, hahaha..
10/12/2010 at 11:50 am
LONDON: Formula One was unlikely to have two rival Lotus teams on the starting grid next season despite heading that way at present, said Renault team owner Gerard Lopez.
Former champions Renault announced on Wednesday that they would be renamed Lotus Renault GP in 2011 with Malaysian-owned sportscar maker Group Lotus joining as title sponsor and eventual co-owners.
The move, following French manufacturer Renault’s sale of its remaining 25 percent stake in the team, pits them against Renault-powered Team Lotus entered by Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes.
The dispute over the use of the Lotus name is heading for the London High Court sometime next year but Lopez said he expected it to be resolved before the start of the season in March.
“As far as having four (Lotus) cars next year on the grid, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“I tend to be a positive person, so I would say that nobody has anything to win from this — except maybe Group Lotus as having four cars running for the same brand and only being involved financially in two of them.
“The natural course of things should be that whoever is the Lotus brand should race as Lotus and whoever isn’t, and actually had asked for a licence to do so, should race as something else,” he added.
“I’m certainly not going to be the one standing and making that decision because I have no power to do so… (but) I don’t think there are going to be two teams of the same name and four cars of the same colour.”
SAME LIVERY
Fernandes’s team competed as Lotus Racing this year under a licence, since revoked, from Lotus Group’s parent Proton. The aviation and music entrepreneur has since acquired the rights to the Team Lotus name from David Hunt.
Hunt, brother of the late world champion James, had owned the name since the original outfit folded in 1994.
Both teams have said they intend to race in black and gold liveries next year.
While Fernandes made his announcement about the colour scheme before Renault, Lopez said his team’s livery had been firmed up internally more than two months ago when talks with Lotus Group gained momentum.
“Images of these cars have been running around our marketing department probably for the better part of eight weeks… so it’s kind of who got there first, right?”
Lopez said Fernandes’s team had done a great job to end the season as the best of the three newcomers but were different to Lotus Renault.
“I don’t see both teams aspiring to the same thing,” he said. “And as a result of that I think it’s pretty childish to want to emulate colours and do this that and the other.”
Lopez said his Genii Capital had begun talks with Proton and Group Lotus, who will now take a major stake in Renault F1, more than a year ago on cooperation unrelated to Formula One.
“We are doing a deal with Group Lotus and we are taking the Lotus brand racing in Formula One. And that’s it. It’s not complicated,” he said.
“There is only one car manufacturer that builds Lotus cars, and that’s Group Lotus, and all we are doing is promoting that brand.”
Read more: Renault boss doubts F1 will have rival Lotus teams – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/more-sports/racing/Renault-boss-doubts-F1-will-have-rival-Lotus-teams/articleshow/7074485.cms#ixzz17g35xfGt
11/12/2010 at 9:02 am
which car does resemblance this lotus-Renault and whom will be a proud owning a proton.
proton handling by lotus powered by Renault,,,its a savvyyyyy.
anyway campro also a collaboration lotus engineering. turbo summore
11/12/2010 at 9:54 am
aah.. Savvy…. Amt gearbox and engine from renault, body and chassis from Proton and lastly ride and handling from lotus.. This is qiute a good mix….
11/12/2010 at 9:55 am
aah.. Savvy…. Amt gearbox and engine from Renault, body and chassis from Proton and lastly ride and handling from lotus.. This is quite a good mix….
13/12/2010 at 3:33 am
Tony Fernandes dah lepas Fairus fauzi.. ada petanda apa2 ke? hehehe
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88671