Closing down Proton and re-deploying its workers to the plantation sector certainly isn't the solution , even though I'm upset with the national car project for keeping car prices excessively and artificially high for 20 years.

On the other hand, allowing foreign car manufacturers to acquire a majority stake in Proton isn't a good solution either, even if it means more affordable cars overall.

A possible best solution is to let local car assemblers like Tan Chong Motors, Kah Motors, etc, to buy stakes in Proton and manage it as a majority Malaysian-owned car design and manufacturing consortium with the option for respective assemblers to assemble national cars on their own assembly lines.

In 1932, four German car companies - Audi, Horch, Wanderer and DKW - merged to form Auto Union AG, which at the time was Germany's second largest car company, and today we still see its outstanding car, the Audi.

A similar sort of consortium could be the best way for the national car to draw upon the assembly and management experience of local car assemblers who could assemble say a car like the Ford Escort 1.3 which sold for RM14,000 in the showrooms or RM15,000 for a 1,500 cc Fiat Ritmo back in 1980 when I started working as a process engineer with National Semiconductor Electronics in Senawang on a starting salary of RM1,000 per month and if I wanted to, I could afford to take out a three-year loan on a new car back then.

I understand that the equivalent salary for a graduate today is around RM1,800, so with cars costing around RM33,000, it is a bigger burden on them, especially those earning less than professional pay. This is my main complaint about the national car project - that it burdened the rakyat for so long and it certainly isn't a "folks-wagon" by any stretch of the imagination.

Otherwise, I couldn't care less if the government wants to impose high tariffs on imported cars, subsidies the national car, tear up Afta (Asean Free Trade Agreement), pull out of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), etc.

The government only has to make the national car very affordable for the masses at fair prices like RM14,000 for a Proton Iswara 1.3, RM18,000 for a Proton Wira 1.3, RM20,000 for Proton Wira 1.5 and RM28,000 for a Proton Waja 1.6 and RM8,000 for a Perodua Kancil.