Proton has revealed its overall sales performance for 2017, notching up 70,991 units compared to 72,291 units sold in 2016. From that figure, 68,184 units were delivered to retail customers, representing a 2.5% increase from 66,513 units in 2016.
Despite the higher retail sales figure, poorer fleet sales of 2,807 units due to lower taxi orders resulted in the decline in overall sales for the year prior. The national carmaker also saw healthy growth in the Central, South, East Coast regions as well as East Malaysia of around 1% to 10% in the units of cars sold.
Focusing on the models, the Saga, Persona and Eritga accounted for 80% of total Proton car sales in 2017, with the Saga being the best-selling model. The sedan registered steady sales above 30,000 units last year, whereas sales of the Persona went up by 27% from 15,390 units to 19,510 units. Lastly, 6,091 units of the Ertiga were delivered to customers in 2017.
“Part of the reasons that sales of our cars stabilised in 2017 is due to the aggressive quality improvement exercise done internally. Our counterpart from Geely Auto performed a stringent quality audit of our cars and within 3 months, we were able to improve our quality points threefold,” said Abdul Rashid Musa, vice president of sales & marketing at Proton.
“We are looking at 2018 more positively and we hope to intensify our efforts to do better this year. This year will be a critical year for Proton as we shall be implementing activities aligned to the new 3-10 years business plan, key to the turnaround of the company. In order for us to pick up our sales numbers, we shall be taking further steps for more attractive consumer campaigns, and improvement of product and service quality,” Rashid added.
