Will car buyers be excited about Proton’s return?

I have a vague and distant memory of two Bullseye contestants winning the star prize on the TV darts game show, which, perhaps or perhaps not unusually, was not a speedboat but a car.

As this was revealed to them by surprise (and this is where I wish I had more confidence in my memory, which yesterday failed to find my keys), I believe one of the two said in a slightly disdainful tone “it’s a Proton!”, to which the host Jim Bowen replied “it doesn’t matter, it’s a car!”.

Alas, my YouTube searches have yet to tell me if my memories are accurate. But what would you think of the reveal of a Proton today? What does the name still mean to you, if it means anything to you?

I ask because we have learned that Proton’s co-owners Geely and DRB-Hicom Berhad are planning to invest billions in the brand as part of a major global expansion that will bring it back to the UK market.

Part of Proton’s appeal to car owners is that Geely is Chinese, while Proton is Malaysian. It builds its cars in Malaysia, and that country’s exports have looser trade and import links with Europe than China’s.

But are you excited? Were you excited when MG came back to the UK? What do you think of Omoda and Jaecoo? I tend to think that names matter. That MG means something, that Proton means something and I wouldn’t want to be the brand director of Omoda and Jaecoo, which so far mean nothing.

At the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​we interviewed Victor Zhang, the boss of Chery in the UK, which will soon try to sell its Omoda and apparently more upmarket Jaecoo cars here.

“In the UK, people still think of MG as a British brand, don’t they?” he said, which rings true to me. And I tend to think that, in addition to the price proposition, brand awareness and memory, even if as hazy as my memory of Bullseye, matter to buyers.

Last year MG took a market share of more than 4% in the UK, surpassing Skoda and Peugeot and almost matching Hyundai.

For Zhang, having unknown brands is not necessarily a problem. In five years, he would like to have “a market share similar to Kia”, which is currently the sixth best-selling brand in the UK, with a market share of 5.7%.

Is it possible? It’s “quite difficult,” admitted Zhang, who believes it’s better to aim high and miss than to aim low and miss again. My first reaction is to think that Chery is going to miss by a long shot, that names and brands matter. But is that because I’m too invested in the company?