Proton has announced the name for the new Proton MPV – the Proton Exora! The Exora is based on the name of the Ixora flower, with the tagline “Keriangan Keluarga”. The name and tagline were picked by the Name The Proton MPV competition grand prize winner Norsholihan Bt Abdul Eanich, who will get to drive and own the 7-seater people mover she helped name once it is launched in April.
The company also revealed that the Proton Exora MPV will be priced at under RM 80,000 and will be available in 5 colours – Genetic Silver, Tranquility Black, Blue Haze, Pyrite Brown and Gaia Blue. In terms of safety, all variants will have at least 2 SRS airbags as standard, but this will be as far as it will go in terms of total airbag count. The Proton Exora will be built in the Shah Alam plant. Cost of development was slightly over RM 450 million.
Proton will produce between 3,000 to 3,500 units of the Proton Exora a month initially. After the local launch in April, the MPV will be swiftly exported to markets such as Thailand and Indonesia by July. We’ll see how the new Exora fares in an open market up with our friends up north against their favorite Toyota MPVs.
For more, please read some past coverage on the Proton Exora to find out more about the new MPV, expected to be powered by the Campro CPS engine. Bookings will be open at a fee of RM1,000 from this Saturday (21st Feb 2009) onwards.
Fully undisguised shots of the Proton MPV – both exterior and interior – have found their way onto the internet, and they reveal to us plenty of details on the eagerly anticipated 7-seater MPV by Proton!
What we can see is one shot of the Proton MPV in white, another in an unidentified brown-like colour (may be something else altogether because of colour balance), and 3 shots of the interior. Here are what can be observed:
- A complete revamp of the Proton steering wheel design that is curiously reminiscent of the one Honda is currently using. There is steering wheel audio controls and also a phone button which could indicate some variants of the MPV are equipped with a Bluetooth hands-free system.
- Instrument panel features a two-meter design, with RPM on the left and an even-numbered speedometer on the right which tops out at 180km/h. The design of the meters are predominantly red with white text. They look like an evolution of the one in the GEN2 CPS facelift, but with modifications that somehow make them end up looking like the one found in the Isuzu D-Max, except the D-Max design is blue.
- A small storage and a card holder (Touch N Go?) located below the driver’s side aircond vent
- A door-open indicator in the middle of the two meters
- A redline of 7,000rpm for the RPM meter
- Two digital displays below each meter. The left one shows a digital fuel meter and digital temp meter as well as various other multi-info readings. I’m not sure what the right one shows.
- The gear lever is dash-mounted much like the Honda CR-V.
- Dashboard itself doesn’t seem to have any texture to it but it’s likely that this is a pre-production version, so the production version should have some texture in-line with all the recent Proton model launches.
- Center dash area design from top to bottom – clock, two aircond vents, 2-DIN CD player, various buttons including hazard light, manual air conditioning knobs, recirculation and air cond button.
- 5-spoke alloy wheels
- Bee-sting antenna at the front just after the windscreen.
- Signal indicator on side mirrors
- Reflector headlamps
- Foglamps on the front bumper
- In the photo of the white MPV you can see the rear hatch swings upwards, instead of the other method which is sideways like a fridge
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