JULY 16, 2002

Petronas to go ahead with engine building

Although Malaysia's Proton has said that it intends to build its own engines for production cars, the company's oil company Petronas is continuing to push ahead with its own car engines.

ALTHOUGH Malaysia's Proton has said that it intends to build its own engines for production cars, the company's oil company Petronas is continuing to push ahead with its own work on production car engines - in league with the Sauber F1 team. Until recently it was expected that Proton would use the Petronas engines but the firm now says it is developing its own Campro engine, which has been designed for Proton by its subsidiary Lotus.

At the moment Proton cars are all fitted with engines based on Mitsubishi models.

It is possible that the Sauber engines will be used in the top of the range models with the Proton units being used in the mass production units.