Over the past couple of months I’ve been doing a lot of travel in the pursuit of speed and car culture as a whole.
Jet-setting across the globe can be quite exhausting, but it’s something that I live for. I’m truly grateful for the opportunities, and even more so when travel is combined with a good cause. Drive4Paul Malaysia was exactly that.
If you haven’t heard of the Paul Walker memorial charity events before, don’t worry – they’re something I’ll go into full detail about in my upcoming Drive4Paul event coverage. But before I get into that, I want to highlight a few of the special cars that filled up the Bandar Malaysia venue last weekend, starting with an interesting Proton Satria Neo build.
Every time I come to Malaysia, I always want to try and find a local car – normally a Proton of some sort – that has been customized. While roaming through the sea of modified machinery at Drive4Paul, a good friend pointed out one build worthy of a closer look.
The owner, who simply goes by the name Narock, acquired the Neo as his first car over a decade ago. In the time since then he’s done a lot of customization, and that includes making many carbon fiber parts himself from scratch.
Having just tried my hand at composites by building a custom carbon air box for Project Rough, my interest was immediately piqued.
Like I have, Narock started off with small carbon fiber bits and pieces, but as his experience with the material has grown, so too has the complexity of his carbon projects. The basic shape of this custom carbon fiber rear bumper comes from the stock Satria Neo item, but Narock has added vents to give it a unique look.
The carbon bumper up front is a fusion between the original Proton item and that of a BMW M4, which Narock told me involved a lot of work. Maybe I should look at some mash-ups for my Skyline…
The custom composite treatment continues inside with a number of pieces formed from red carbon fiber.
Narock’s Satria was displayed at Drive4Paul with its hood up, and for good reason – the engine bay has received some serious love as well.
If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the stock engine has been upgraded with – at a minimum – intake and exhaust modifications and some detailing, but there’s a lot more to it than that. In factory form, this Satria Neo’s engine was orientated with the intake at the rear of the engine bay and the exhaust at the front. Here it’s been twisted the other way around.
Narock’s thinking behind this, was that if he was able to have the intake on the front side of the engine rather than against the firewall, he’d be able to take full advantage of the air rushing in through the newly-designed front bumper. The upgrade was achieved by dipping into the Proton parts bin and custom-adapting Mitsubishi engine components from the previous generation Satria.
It may not be producing huge power, but the estimated 180hp being sent to the front wheels from the tuned engine is plenty for the lightweight hatchback.
The transformation of this Proton has taken over four years to get to this point, and it’s a brilliant example of Malaysian tuning. It definitely got my brain thinking about what I can do with Project Rough as well…
In the meantime though, stay tuned for more from Drive4Paul.
Ron Celestine
Instagram: celestinephotography