Proton's Cheapest Sedan in Australia Launched by October

Proton is planning a full-throttle push when it comes to the sedan it will launch in Australia, partially following the surprising evolution of Chinese makers who announced new and cheap models all around the world. But Malaysian manufacturer Proton says it has the perfect way to stop the Chinese invasion: a very cheap small sedan to be launched in Australia by October.

In fact, Proton says this will be the cheapest sedan on the local market, with the retail price likely to go around $13,000, according to a report by drive.com.au. Although it was originally projected to go on sale in 2010, Proton is now accelerating the process to counteract the Chinese rivals and will release the much-debated cheap sedan four month earlier.

“We were able to get one of the variants early and we jumped at the chance. We do want to get the vehicle on sale prior to the Chinese getting here,” Proton sales manager Billy Falconer was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source. “The price we come out at will really set the cat among the pigeons. We are going to market this car really hard,” he said.

The car will be powered by a 1.6-liter engine connected to a five-speed manual transmission, with an automatic flavor and a smaller displacement configuration to join the range in February 2010.

The Australian small sedan will be based on the same platform as the Malaysian Saga model but will be marketed under a different name Down Under. In November, the manufacturer will debut a series of new models, including cheaper versions of Satria, Neo, Gen2 and Persona models.