The 2019 Proton Iriz and Proton Persona facelifted models have been revealed to the general public at this year's Malaysia Autoshow yesterday. The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had the honour of doing so during the official opening of the Autoshow. The two cars will be on display throughout the Autoshow which will continue till 14 April (this sunday).
The 2019 Iriz and Persona facelifts were first revealed to the media during previews in February and March as well as to selected customers at events held during weekends at certain outlets. Now, everyone can actually view the new cars as they were basically officially unveiled but surprisingly not officially launched as yet. It would have been a good move to have just launched the cars as we had the Prime Minister of Malaysia to do it for them. It could also save a few Ringgit too. Oh whatever.
Proton has their reasons of course. We can only speculate but they could have something up their sleeves or they may be trying to negotiate the final recommended retail prices with the powers that be (rumours have been flying around that they want to come out with a competitive price even with the talking infotainment system - better than the pre-facelift one!). Whatever the case, the two new Proton cars are now on display and you can have a look at them.
So as a recap, the Persona is the sedan and the Iriz is a hatchback. Both cars have been redesigned on the outside and they have incorporated new styling on the front and rear bumpers, a new front grille with the ethereal bow and the infinite weave pattern, LED Daytime driving lights and wheel designs. The Iriz hatchback also gets a new tailgate design which makes the car look wider and less stumpy looking. The Persona sedan now looks slightly slimmer looking especially from the re-design of the rear bumper section. It looks cleaner and less bulky. You can still notice that it is a cab-forward type of design that started out as a hatchback (it IS based on the Iriz) but it looks neater. So both look better.
The interior makes use of Geely's talking infotainment systems. Proton has installed an intelligent head unit in the Premium 1.6AT variants (note this point folks). This is actually a first for a B-segment car and it feature s an embedded eSIM card to keep the car connected to the Internet. Apps are used for music streaming, navigation and voice recognition are offered and can be accessed via a 7-inch touchscreen featuring a full colour display and 16GB of internal memory. The system is based on the Android Operating System and smartphone users will also be able to enjoy a full mirroring function via the easy connect application, allowing them to access the data stored on their mobile devices.
Now aside from the redesign on the styling and the infotainment system, the engineers at Proton also improved the quality of the materials used in both cars in terms of fit and finish as well as claiming to have slightly improved the overall build quality and refinement levels of the cars. According to Proton, it offers less harshness than before as some additional work has been done refining the parts used in the cars. This in turn should make the ownership experience slightly better. The engineers made 367 improvements on the Iriz while 303 improvements have been made to various parts on the Persona.
“ Our engineers and designers have worked very hard over the past 18 months to improve both cars and we are confident Malaysian car buyers will see and experience the benefit of their efforts the moment they step inside each car. To date, over 8,000 bookings have been made (for both the cars) and we are confident the numbers will increase once the cars go on sale,” said Dr Li Chunrong CEO of PROTON.
The number of bookings are more good news to Proton. It would seem to follow the success that Proton has received with their first ever SUV, the Proton X70. Proton actually held the best sales numbers for overall SUV sales for the first quarter of 2019 because of the X70. It can be said that Malaysians have taken a liking to the combination of intelligent features, contemporary styling, great product quality and most importantly, the very attractive pricing. To date,more than 25,000 bookings with a large number of the X70 have been delivered so far.
So it would seem that Proton is on a roll (as I've stated earlier in other articles). It would have been nice if they could have actually launched both cars by now like their original plan. But we all know plans change due to certain circumstances. But right now, if you are free over the weekend, head over to the Malaysia Autoshow so you can take a look at these cars and the other Proton cars on display as well as cars from other brands too.
If you want to of course. I'm not forcing you guys to do so as weekends could be a good time to sleep. Or look at cars. The choice is yours.
Anyway, here are our videos on our initial tests held on the media preview days for both cars. You guys can watch it to find out what we think about both facelifted cars. If you want to read about them, some other thoughts are here for the Persona facelift and here, for the Iriz facelift as well as some other thoughts on the Iriz here too (somehow I had a lot more to say about it than the Persona).
2019 Proton Persona Facelift - 1.6 Premium CVT Test Drive
2019 Proton Iriz Facelift - 1.6 Premium CVT Test Drive
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