Test Driving the Proton Satria Neo CPS

Not too long ago I was having coffee with Mathew, a classmate of mine from secondary school. Since graduating from college he had found a job at a telco and had been very quickly climbing up the corporate ladder given his young age. While we were having that coffee he brought up the topic of buying himself a new car. He was driving an old Proton Satria and he had his eyes on the newer Proton Satria Neo.

I never really thought much about the Satria Neo. I mean it looked nice from the outside at all but I’ve never actually been into one before. Then just recently I was put in touch with Roslina from Proton and she wanted to let me test drive the car. She was even going to be nice enough to drive it from their showroom in Shah Alam all the way to my office in KL just to let me have an hour with it.


The minute I opened the car door and saw the very sporty looking seats I was like


“WOAH!!! What’s with the seats? Is this some special edition?”



And Roslina said 
“No… all the Satria Neos are like that”.

The front seats were nice and comfy. The back seats is tight like many other two-doors but it’s pretty comfy too.

I excitedly got into the car and starting pressing all the buttons I could find. Just to explore a little.

Then I put on my seat belt only to see my biggest horror: A manual gear box.

I had not driven a manual car since I passed my driving test.. it had been like… 7 years! 

I warned Roslina that I was probably going to do really badly and she very kindly just said “It’s okay…”.
So off I went. 


5 minutes passed and I was doing really well. Roslina then praised me
“Not bad what… you seem to be doing very well”.

Just 3 seconds after she said that, I released the clutch a bit too quickly and killed my engine. I was at the traffic light and all the cars in front of me had already gone passed. The cars behind me on the other hand were patiently waiting though. They didn’t honk me or anything but I looked into my rear view mirror in the time of crisis and noticed the guy in the car behind me shaking his head.

I quickly freed my gear, started the engine again and then tried to move forward but again, out of the anxiety I killed the engine again. This happened I think another 2 times then the light turned red.

I looked into the rear view mirror again at the guy behind me and this time he looked annoyed. He looked like if I were to make him miss the next light again he would get out of his car with a durian and smash the durian on my bonet.

I focused really hard when the light turned green next and fortunately managed to pull away from the light. I immediately insisted that I drive out of the city. All that traffic, way too many stops for a manual gear hopeless like me. So I drove out to Mont Kiara which was when I really got to try out the car.


I liked it very very much!

Made me feel a little nostalgic. My first car was a Proton Wira, a car my dad gave me to when I first went to study A-levels in College. It wasn’t exactly like any of the sports cars that my other friends in college were driving but it got me place to place. 

Sure the old car would have some problems here and there like power windows failing and all but it never once broke down on me or had any really serious problems.

Perhaps it was because I abided very strongly to my dad’s motto. “Take care of the car and the car will take care of you”.

The Satria Neo however is generations after the Wira and I must say the improvements are really obvious. It’s not just how the inside and outside of the car looks a lot nicer but it’s the experience of driving the car.

The handling is great plus when I drive at 110km/h, the steering doesn’t rattle anymore like my old Wira used to. I really enjoyed the drive except for my stressful moments of killing my own engine because I suck at the stick. 



Desmond called me when I was driving and I was too focused on trying to let my engine die again I didn’t answer his call. Then after a while I stopped by the road side to take a break and returned his call. I told him I was driving the new Satria Neo and he asked me how much it costs.



I said: “About RM57,000”.

And he went “What?!? So cheap?! Can’t be so cheap!”



So that could mean one or both of two things. Either the Satria is really cheap at that price or Desmondkiu is rich. I think probably both.

I returned the car later that day uninjured from anything (whew)… 



Thanks for the fun drive Proton