Will car buyers be excited about the return of Proton?

Prior discusses how new brands can capture the attention of UK drivers with an element of familiarity

I have a dim and distant memory of two Bullseye contestants winning the darts game show’s star prize, which, perhaps or perhaps not unusually, wasn’t a speedboat but a car.

As it was surprise-revealed to them (and this is where I wish I could be more confident in my memory, which yesterday couldn’t find my keys), I think one of the pair said slightly dismissively “it’s a Proton!”, to which host Jim Bowen replied “it doesn’t matter, it’s a car!”. 

Alas, my YouTube searching hasn’t yet revealed whether my recollections are accurate. But how would you, do you think, feel about a Proton being revealed to you today? What does the name still mean to you, if anything?

I ask because we’ve learned that Proton co-owners Geely and DRB-Hicom Berhad are planning to invest billions into the brand as part of a major global expansion that will bring it back to the British market. 

Part of the appeal for the owners is that while Geely is Chinese, Proton is Malaysian. It builds its cars in Malaysia, and exports from that country have softer established trade and import links with Europe than those from China.

But are you excited? Were you excited when MG returned to the UK? How do you feel about Omoda and Jaecoo? I tend to think that names matter. That MG means something, that Proton means something and that I wouldn’t fancy being the brand manager for Omoda and Jaecoo, which thus far don’t mean a jot.

At the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, we interviewed Victor Zhang, the UK chief of Chery, which will soon be trying to sell its Omoda and apparently more upmarket Jaecoo cars here.

“In the UK, people still consider MG a British brand, right?” he posited, which I think is true. And I tend to think that, in addition to the price offering, knowledge and memory of the brand, even if it’s as dim as my recollection of Bullseye, matters to buyers. 

Last year, MG took a UK market share of more than 4%, outselling Skoda and Peugeot and almost matching Hyundai.

Zhang doesn’t necessarily think that having unknown brands is a problem, though. In five years’ time, he would like to have “a similar market share to Kia”, which is currently the sixth-best-selling brand in the UK, with a 5.7% share.

Possible? It’s “quite challenging”, admitted Zhang, who thinks it’s best to aim high and miss than aim low and still miss. My initial reaction is to think Chery will miss by a lot, that names and brands matter. But is that because I’m too invested in the business?

Last year, Cupra sold almost as many cars in the UK as Seat, the brand that spawned it. And what did the average British car buyer know of Cupra five years ago? Likewise Polestar, which last year sold almost as many cars here as Lexus and Jaguar?

I wonder if I, you and people in and around  the business do sometimes lose sight of what the average car buyer thinks. 

I remember (because I took notes at the time) a spokesman at the launch of a Kia Rio in the early 2000s saying that the Hyundai group wanted to be a top-five global car maker in short time. Pfft, I thought, having spent time in the Rio. And, of course, last year it was the third-biggest.

So while I think that established brands are important, and somehow it feels important to me that I care about it, maybe I think about it too much and all most buyers are interested in are product, price and pleasant dealer experiences.

That said, I’m still not sure I’d want to try to sell a Yangwang.