He destroyed a Kelisa

Yesterday a piece of interesting news caught my attention. It seems that Datuk Abdul Rahman Sulaiman, the Deputy Minister from the PM's department was worried that the Clarkson did the piece our country's best selling Perodua Kelisa.

Sure, the car did score high points in quality in the JD Power Asia Pacific customer satisfactory survey, but most of us buy a Kelisa because it's affordable. That's satisfaction for you! Without a doubt, if you asked me I'd buy a Kelisa over any Proton model any day because the built quality is a lot better and dare I say tougher?

So what if Clarkson did that piece our beloved small car? He destroyed a Kelisa. If you made something bad, you'd have to be prepared for critics. On the bright side, I think it's great that a Malaysian made car got featured on Top Gear. I mean, the Savvy was so ugly that it was only mentioned in the "News" section, where a picture of the Savvy was mocked and made fun of. This would be due to the marketing strategy that Proton took in the UK. Since they owned Lotus, they advertised the Savvy as the "First Lotus". Of course this didn't fare well there. It was bad enough that the UK has lost all of their national cars. Rover, gone... Ford, US owned... Mini, became a German... Lotus, became Malaysian... Roll Royce, became German as well... Bentley, ahh the sporty saloon became German as well... so what's left? So you can see why that taking that marketing angle on the Savvy would have been a bad idea.

Come to think of it, my first encounter with the Perodua Kelisa was when I met Yen. This was the first Kelisa I drove, it has a white facia meter cluster, giving it the supposedly sporty feel. But that's not going to fool anyone. I mean, being in the car, the plastic and fittings feel a lot more solid that those on a Proton. For a 1.0 litre car, it felt nippy, small and nice. I guess the original Daihatsu car was meant to emulate the Mini. Of course sending her the clip of Clarkson having his way with the Kelisa was a bad idea.

You know, jokes aside. The Kelisa, which I thought to be a bad name cause the fish that it was named after is the Arowana. How can you compare that to such an elegant fish? But due to it's good value for money, most people buy the Kelisa as a first car. I mean, in the gang alone, a few people own a Kelisa. Yen's got one. Ka Seong's got one, Sue Ann bought one and Rudy's sister has one.

Looks like Perodua's got it right this time by discontinuing the Kelisa and coming up with a replacement model. Just look at Proton, they milk each model for it's worth. It's like milking a cow and when there's nothing left, they still continue to milk it hoping that something would come out. THe first ever produced model, the Saga is still available. When was it produced? 1985? 1986?

I'm actually looking forward to the Kelisa replacement model. So far, I have nothing but praises for Perodua, kudos! Keep up the good work and remember, a little critic didn't hurt nobody. Instead, it looks like a good opportunity for Perodua to use it to their advantage. Try hanging a Vios with a one tonne weight in front of it's grille. I would bet you that if you did that to the flagship model, the Camry, it would still fall off the same. Big doesn't mean tougher.