Proton Gen-2

The Gen-2 is the car where Proton stopped borrowing a Mitsubishi platform and built its own. The chassis was developed with Lotus, the engine was the first CamPro, and the shape was drawn in-house. That makes it important beyond its sales numbers: the Persona and Satria Neo that followed sat on the same bones.

Owners get a practical five-door with a useful boot, a rev-happy 1.6 and steering that still feels better than a 2004 hatchback has any right to. The trade is refinement. Road and wind noise are present, the cabin plastics age, and the fixed-cam engine is flat below 3,000 rpm.

This page covers the original 1.6 S4PH engine, sold from 2004 to the March 2008 facelift. Two other cars share the Gen-2 body and are deliberately outside the variant list: the 1.3 S4PE that arrived in August 2005, and the 2008-on facelift cars with the 1.6 IAFM or the 125 hp CamPro CPS. If your car has CPS, the engine, prices and some faults here do not apply. The 1.3 is a separate engine with its own parts and should not be read as a smaller version of this one.

What ownership actually looks like: the mechanicals are simple and parts are cheap, but the car is old enough that wear items decide the bill. Power window switches, the radiator fan motor, engine mounts and the four-speed automatic are the usual places money goes. None of them are exotic, and most are cheaper to fix than the same fault on a European hatchback.

Production of the Malaysian-market car ended in 2012. Values bottomed out long ago, so condition and service history matter far more than the year on the plate.

Verified against the Proton Gen-2 production and powertrain record in the Wikipedia Proton Gen 2 article, the paultan.org 3 March 2008 facelift launch report and the paultan.org 3 August 2005 CamPro 1.3 report, checked 2026-10-26.