Proton drivers/owners, heads up!
Proton Holdings Bhd will recall almost 100,000 units of its Exora, Preve, and Suprima models to fix the CFE oil cooler hoses starting today.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Abdul Harith Abdullah, said these models face problems with their oil cooler hoses, which would break down when the cars reach an average mileage of 40,000km due to the degradation of internal hose/tube material.
“We will call the owners and the priority will be given to the cars with mileage of 40,000km and above. We hope to finish this in the next six months,” he told reporters at the preview of the new Proton Perdana in Shah Alam today (16th February, Tuesday).
UPDATE (17th February, 3pm):
Apparently, Proton has known about the problem prior to the recall but chose to keep mum about it. Instead, the manufacturer quietly replaced the items only when car owners brought their cars in for maintenance.
MMO quoted Proton CEO Datuk Abdul Harith Abdullah as saying, “We don’t like to tell or shout about our weakness. Most of the time what we did was we wait for the customers to come in to send their car in for the next service, we will log in and we can see pop up in our computer ‘Okay this car we have to change this item because of the service fix programme.'”
“If the customers doesn’t come, then the tendency is the problem happens,” he added.
Datuk Harith Abdullah also said that the “painful” admission was necessary if Proton wants to remain relevant to Malaysia.
Sources: Bernama via malaysiakini, MMO, The Star Online / Featured image from Proton.
