ABSTRACT
Before the Malaysian national car project Proton Saga was designed in the beginning of 1980s as an integral part of the larger national heavy industry project (HICOM), the government had already in the 1960s encouraged the setting up of automobile assembly plants in Malaysia (Mahidin and Kanageswary 2004) – the first with Swedish Motors (Volvo) in 1967. In 1980 there were 11 assembly plants in Malaysia producing 25 car brands and 122 models (Athukorala 2014, 4). The aim of the national car project was twofold. On the one hand the government sought to stimulate and accelerate the transformation of Malaysia to an industrial developed economy by transfer of knowledge to build automobiles. On the other hand the government would favour a system of automobility. This system comprises of components that in their combination generate and reproduce the ‘specific character of domination’ that the car exercises. The first and essential components are the use of cars and their production by carmakers. The other components such as infrastructure (roads, bridges, parking places etc.) and institutions supporting family life, housing, city life, commuting, leisure, pleasure of movement etc. adapting to the use of cars, constitute, together with car production, the system of automobility (Urry 2004). In order to favour this system the government has built a dense network of roads, particularly in and outside the greater cities, and has, through its policies of easy car credits and fuel price subsidies, promoted private transportation (Barter 2004) and given special support to the national car project. Thus, the story of the national car project is a journey back to the government’s early attempts to establish Malaysia as an independent industrial nation. Until the 1980s, manufacturing had concentrated on processing imported raw materials, food and chemicals, and assembling imported components, such as electronics and vehicles. In contrast to Singapore, Malaysia’s government did not want to rely only on cooperation with multinational companies and exportoriented industrialisation based on foreign investments. It wanted to have its own industries, following an import-substitution industrial (ISI) strategy like many other newly industrialising countries. Early on in the 1970s Japan was viewed as the best model to follow (the ‘Look East’ policy). At that time, Japan was seen as a world leader in industrial productivity, technical quality, work process organisation and industrial export (Johnson 1982).
