Sunday, July 6, 2008

Made in Malaysia

I'd heard about this clip a long time ago, but funnily enough I didn't get round to actually watching it until last night:



As someone who traverses the asphalt rivers of KL regularly, I totally sympathise with Clarkson on this. I cannot even begin to recall the sheer number of times some disgusting little wretch skipped about 100 yards worth of queue to squeeze that filthy little tin foil box of car 'twixt me and the car in front of me. Being a man of peace, I tend to keep my temper in check with liberal use of Hokkien, with a smidgeon of appropriate gesticulation for good measure.

Clarkson's got it easy, though. He only had to drive that monstrosity for a wee bit. There's hundreds of them here. The extremely low cost of production, total disregard for international safety and emissions standards and obscenely high import duties on foreign cars make the dressed-up go karts produced by Proton and Perodua the deathtraps of choice in Malaysia. You can catch Top Gear's coverage of the best of Malaysian manufacturing here and here. It ain't pretty.

But hey, at least here, on the great and vast and amazing internet, I can catch a glimpse of a Perodua Kelisa getting what it deserves. :-)

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