Proton Saga LMST 1.3 12 valve

We needed a hire car to get around the island of Langkawi in Malaysia so went on the hunt for the best deal around. This involved going into the first rough looking tour/car hire shop near our hotel and asking for the cheapest car. I arranged a deal for 80 Malaysian Ringgit for a full 24 hours and eagerly awaited the delivery of the car at 9.30 am the next day. I had not seen the car, only that it was a burnt orange colour and relatively new (or so I was told).

I excitedly went to the lobby at 9.30, and there she was! Burnt orange exactly as they had said!

Unfortunately the car hire girl explained that this was not my Proton.  Slightly further down the parking lot we found the actual car (she seemed to have preferred to park it away from the entrance, presumably in case anyone she knew was eating breakfast and might see her get out).

Ok, ok, this wasn't the car either, rather a photo of how one might have looked shortly after rolling out of the factory in between 2003 and 2006. Here is mine.

You can see the resemblance but you could also say that about Ronnie Wood and Johnny Depp in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean episodes, i.e. my particular Proton Saga has had a bit of a life.

After signing the documents and watching with an open jaw as the car hire girl went round marking the little car drawing on her sheet with lines where there was damage (I couldn't join her doing this for fear of coming across as unrespectful by scribbling across the whole diagram to save time) I had a chance to closer inspect what automotive catastrophe I had unwittingly subjected us to for the next 24 hours.
 

The Proton Persona is Malaysia's best ever selling car and is even upheld as a national symbol. It is based on a 1980's Mitsubishi design that was continually in production in Malaysia for almost 30 years. In that respect this is one of the most enduring car designs, up there with the Austin Ambassador and the Fiat 131. The reasons for such longevity however, I assume cannot be aesthetic.

Our car was one of the last produced and when it came off the line sported facelift additions to the classic shape such as the powerful rear spoiler, required to keep those 83 ponies in check from the also-Mitsubishi-sourced 1.3 litre, 12 valve engine.

The hot-as-molten-lava powerhouse sits so forward of the front axles it is almost Audi-esque and must add excellently to the forward bias of the weight distribution. All the better for sharp turn-in then!

In our particular car the battery strap had been relinquished in favour of a little weight saving up front so the electricity storer was free to bounce up and down against the bonnet over bumps. That is why they fitted the positive terminal shroud of course! Speaking of the bonnet, it was not lightweight - not at all.

The poor old girl must have been in a few front-enders (and side-enders etc) in her life. The bonnet was almost completely sustained by an inch-think layer of wob. At some point the much frequented bodyshop seem to have given up and wrapped the most prone quarter with a Visit Malaysia sticker instead of finishing a job. I think they probably got a few stickers done so they can just re-apply as and when the next understeery incident takes place.

Probably at the same time the bodyshop got bored of fibreglassing the LMST-spec sporty front bumper and loosely fitted one off another model of car. Which car is anyone's guess. They also gave up ball-pein hammering out the wing and door at about 2.30 on a Friday and went for a beer. However, they should be commended that their choice of leaving the P-40 laden bonnet in a fetching shade of dark grey primer does add a subtle drift-spec flavour.

One nice surprise was that a full 25% of the original-issue LMST hubcaps were intact and still in place.

Another facet of the late updates to the Saga was the interior. The special materials used for the revised dashboard had the property of being able to raise the hairs on your forearms through static electricity alone.

The later dashboard style makes the confusing array of controls fall easily to hand. Sadly in our example the radio did not work.

A primitive version of air conditioning was fitted, although the blower position lever was very similar to a child's toy telephone in as much as all the buttons made noises, but nothing actually happened.

All Sagas of this model came fitted with a luxury 5-speed manual transmission. The feel of the gearchange rated only slightly lower in tests than one of those bic-biro's that have 6 colours to chose from, as you try to choose more than one colour at a time.

Out on the open highway the sensation of driving was exhilarating, possibly because it was the first car I have driven in 10 months. The 83bhp was delivered in surging chunks of acceleration as the single carburettor coughed and burped its way through chunks of crap that must have been in the very bottom of the tank as it was supplied with fumes only. After a long drink of 10L of finest 95 octane we started on our 100km long island adventure.

During one particularly long 3rd gear right hander the surging reappeared worse than usual. Soon after this the engine came to a halt whilst valiantly charging up a slight incline. After several failed attempts to restart we had to reverse coast to a place of safety at the side of the road. There was no fan running and not one of the two dash lights had illuminated so we assumed the fuel surge from the over-0.15g-corner had caused the sparse fuel to end up on the opposite side of the cruddy fuel tank to the low-pressure carby pump and the poor engine had suffocated. 5 minutes of quiet contemplation at horizontal was all the plucky Proton needed before it reluctantly took its next few sips of aereated petroleum and we accelerated off into the hills once more, in search of another fuel station.