We recently saw photos taken by Qing Luke from the Malaysia X70 Community (MYX70COM) showing this Proton X70 on the back of a flat bed tow truck. It looked severely stripped of parts, lacking front fenders, wheels and tyres, doors, a hood, and just about all its powertrain components. It’s clear that this was a top-spec model too, as there are parts (probably the front bumper) that’s stowed inside the car with part of its sticking out the sunroof. Come to think of it, the sunroof could have been removed as well…
We have to ask ourselves what happened here and why would anyone transport an X70 in such a manner. without wheels, this doesn’t look like the proper way to treat a customer car, as a lot of weight is being placed on the exhaust, skirts and rear bumper. These parts could break. It looks like one of the exhausts has already been bent out of shape.
There are a couple of theories, both end up at the same conclusion: this car is being scrapped for parts. First, this could be a customer car that got into a bad frontal collision or suffered flood damage. The insurance company has written it off and the car is on the way to a ‘potong kereta’ yard, with its engine, transmission and rims already being sold/damaged beyond recovery.
The second theory is that Proton themselves have decided to scrap this car for parts. Looking at that front bumper inside the car, a frontal collision doesn’t seem likely. This car could be an early model CBU car from China that was not sold to a customer. And with supply chains disrupted, it might have been easier or necessary for Proton to take an existing unsold car from a dealer and strip it for parts to honour warranties on existing cars or to carry out basic repairs or to fix accident damage on the first batch of X70s sold.
We know this has definitely been an issue with some Proton customers having to wait months for repairs to be done despite insurance approval.
Side Note
Whether this is an older CBU model or a CKD model is definitely not easy to tell. From the side and rear, there’s no effective way to tell the two apart. However, we do know that the red exterior colour was changed from ‘Flame Red’ to ‘Ruby Red’ on the CKD model. Again, the difference is hard to tell, especially through a grainy photograph. Regardless, only the most expensive variant of the CKD and CBU X70 had a sunroof, and that appears to be present here.
Picture credit to Qing Luke from the Malaysia X70 Community (MYX70COM) page.
