Hi all,

I am back from the media launch of the upgraded satria neo CPS held in APAC, Subang.
The review below is totally based from my point of view.

Satria NEO CPS is only available in H-Line only.

Review of the car
--------------------
Interior:
As shown by the picture below, the interior is basically the same expect for the plastic leather seats, colour tone and also the door trim.
The meter panel is exactly like the previous NEO. No fancy design what so ever.

The new interior colour tone


The door trim

Notice the red trim?

The front seats


The rear seats


The steering wheel, notice the odd colour tone ??


The same meter panel, only difference is the colour they used for the numbering (milage, DTE, L/100km etc), previously its blue and now its orange/amber


The gear knob (Manual transmission)


Me on the test drive list:


Exterior will be posted in the next post.

Test Drive Review:
The test drive course was actually a mini auto khana course with tight turns.

Oh my, I was in for a surprise. The laggy drive-by-wire found in the previous NEO is not apparent at all in this CPS model. The throttle response was almost instant. Power delivery is smooth. Tap the throttle and go. Based on driving the car itself, the heavier weight (1212kg 1.6 MT) compared to the previous (1159kg 1.6 MT) is not apparent at all in this model.

The car just keep on going and going. You gotta test this car out for yourself and you can see the difference.
After testing the CPS neo, driving back my NEO was kinda sad because the power delivery and the throttle response of the stock standard CPS is very much better compared to my mildly modded NEO.

Power is not the main concern of the NEO CPS. It is the handling that is where the improvement can be seen.

In stock form itself, the body roll is very minimal even tho the car is being thrown around the tight corners. I dare say in stock form, the NEO CPS handles as well as as regular NEO that is done up with strut bars and all. The car is very neutral when being thrown into corners, it just goes where ever you point the steering to. Mind you, the grip is provided by stock CSC-1 rubbers in 195/50/16. If a much better rubbers is use, just imagine the potential of this car.

All in all, this has the potential to succeed Satria GTi as Malaysia next hot hatch.
The styling is spot on, the handling is spot on, and from the test drive trashing, the interior build seems spot on.
Only time will tell.
Hopefully proton get this right by minimizing QC issues with this car.

My dissapointment is that (personal view)
- no Auto folding side mirror
- no HID
- the steering wheel colour is poorly match to the leather wrapping. if you have seen it life, it looks odd seriously.
- interior space utilisation is still poor. so many empty space that can be made into compartments that can be used to store stuffs



This post has been edited by kcng: Feb 14 2009, 04:38 AM

Exterior:
As many has already seen from the spyshots, the exterior is as follows

The rims with CSC-1 as standard rubbers


Front view




Rear view


The spoiler


Side profile






The logo to show what is under the hood


The engine


This post has been edited by kcng: Feb 14 2009, 03:57 AM

the wheel arch actually looks nicer on black colour because the rubber strip is not as apparent on the white colour


if u look closely above, you can see the white rubber strip that will turn yellow over time thus standing out and make it ugly

the spoiler serve a purpose


at least according to the engineering spec

proton can make the car light also

using light high tensile steel but will the buyers pay the price for it?

selected showroom will have the display unit
hopefully by end of the month, all show room in malaysia will have one

ZeroSP,
yes, the weight is a big putoff initially cuz everyone is talking about it. but after the test drive, the response was totally opposite.
you cant feel the additional weight there

yeah
2nd hand neo h-line value will drop like mad

yay


its not full leather
its PVC kind......

the steering wheel looks nice IF it is not wrapped by the leather...
the colour tone is odd.... if they had made the colour tone to match, then it will look nice...

sorry guys, i took down the pic for watermarking because my pic is stolen and credit is given to others

it will be back up shortly with more new pics.

sorry for the trouble.

ok i am done water marking my pic

and for the first 2 post, i have made some changes to the pictures..
its different now compared to earlier


i put up some new pics

and 10 years ago the emission law is?

lol
its so obvious u dont know about law


i could not commend about the noise insulation because we cannot bring it up to speed long enough to judge
sorry...

in the class where the neo compete in, there is vtec and vvti

so where is your vtec/vvti yo?

fyi, in race, the vtec/vvti system is removed

reason:
cost....

erm, the test drive review was in the first page?
but its abit short tho.