Misty: The Arctic Blue Proton Waja
“Yeah it's not fast, but the power delivery is linear” commented Hunter as Misty — his arctic blue Proton Waja gently wafted up to speed, and indeed the power delivery was linear. Smoothly (and slowly) the Waja was up to a comfortable cruising speed. Heavy body + small engine means that off the mark acceleration was never Misty’s strongest asset. “If I had struck the lottery, the first thing I’d do to the Waja is to fit a bigger engine, something with a bit more grunt” said Hunter.
Apart from the few stickers adorned on the car, to any other person this is just like any other Waja. Incidentally another popular car you don't see often on the road these days. Yes, this is a row-your-own manual version but then again they were also quite popular for the time. What makes this particular Waja special however, is that this was one man's ticket to freedom. As it was the first car of Hunter, from the rather excellent YouTube channel All We Drive.
Welcome to another segment of The Common Car — a segment which curates car stories that are not the most exotic or exciting, but deserves to be told as a reminder on why we petrolhead fall in love with our cars.
The story of this particular Waja began some 16 years ago in 2003, when Hunter’s father bought it new. There weren’t many choices available on a school teacher’s salary, informed Hunter. This was 2003 mind, the first generation Toyota Vios hasn’t even been launched yet. The only other car that was a candidate was the Toyota Avanza, but then again this was the time when the Avanza still had the gutless 1.3 so the Waja became the default choice for the family.
From June 2003 onwards, Misty was pressed into daily use. Apart from the daily drives around town, Misty was also the primary travel car of the family for the first five years of its life, having travelled to all states sans the northernmost one. Credit where it’s due, the Waja was an admirable highway cruiser, comments Hunter. For highway driving, the Waja’s heavy body meant it was as stable at a rock, although it does get a tad noisy above the legal limit, no thanks to the limited NVH dampening. NVH wasn’t too big a deal a decade and a half ago apparently. But then again I’m informed that Misty still feels solid and planted even at a shade under 200 kph, even if the engine is screaming its head off near the red line.
With 270k on the clock, partly thanks to the yearly 10 hour trips from Segamat to Kota Bharu, one can reasonably expect some mechanical maladies to occur, especially since it's a Proton. Cue the jokes on Malaysian engineering at its finest tee hee hee, but amazingly(?) Misty has had no major mechanical maladies in all 13 years of its life. There is not even a need for an engine overhaul yet, according to Hunter’s mechanic. Cheekily, Hunter puts it down to the Japanese sourced Mitsubishi-derived Orion 4G-18. Although a tad under-powered, apparently the Mitsubishi powered Waja delivers surprisingly good fuel economy too. However that could be due to the fuel gauge that is, to put it kindly, hopefully optimistic. Well it won’t be a Malaysian car if there isn’t some minor quirks and features.
Misty exhibits a bit more of Malaysian engineering with the Malaysian boleh-lah attitude showing up in some random trim pieces. We’ll give a pass to Proton as this is a 13 year old car (at time of writing) but some parts of the car hasn’t been ageing as gracefully as the mechanicals.
As mentioned in Hunter’s excellent video review on this exact car above, the door handles on Misty are mismatched due to them having a tendency to snap off, and replacements are getting hard to come by. So as is the case, every time you pull on Misty’s door handle there’ll be a 50/50 chance that the door handle will be pulled but the door will remain firmly and adamantly shut as the door handle will have already snapped off. Hunter now periodically warns his friends who are getting in to be very very gentle when opening the doors and even he occasionally gets nervous when opening the rear doors as combined with the fact the door rubbers are prone to get stuck especially if the door hasn’t been opened for days, Hunter may find himself with more bits of door handle shaped bits on his hands than are ideal.
Sticking with door related foibles, the electric windows are also a tad problematic on Misty. To those who are vaguely familiar with the Proton’s of yesteryear, of which Misty is one of them, they would already have seen this coming as Protons and failing electric windows seems to go along together as well as Alfa Romeos and rust or VWs and DSG woes. In Misty’s case the electric windows started a mere two years after it rolled off the dealership floor. The rear windows packed up first, then the fronts and the cycle continues to this day. The windows were fixed, and fixed, and fixed, and fixed…
Just to give you a scale of the problem, since 2017 the driver side window alone was mended 4 times, and even after fixing it there still were some lingering issues. So now Hunter will have a slight panic attack whenever anyone tries to operate Misty’s rear windows, lest it won’t ever go back up.
After 13 years of hard graft, Misty now sees seldom use as the MRT has taken over the business of transporting Hunter to and from work. She’s only called for when Hunter needs to travel further afield, and when the time comes she is ready for any adventure. The air-con still blows ice cold (Thanks to the Denso-Proton partnership) and I can confirm that the seats are supremely cushy. Easily comfortable enough to waft to anywhere she needs to be, which sometimes could be an empty mountain road on a weekend morning.
Let me tell you now, Misty the arctic blue 13 year old 270,000 km Proton Waja can indeed do fun.
You might scoff thinking a decade old mid-sized front wheel drive sedan with no power whatsoever can be fun but then let me remind you this is Hunter’s first car, and first cars, no matter how mundane and boring, is always fun. You might continue to scoff thinking a Waja can be fun, but Hunter has proved that the Waja can indeed be fun. Just a quick reminder that Proton owned Lotus during the time the Waja was in production, so a little bit of Lotus handling wizardry did hopefully make its way into the Waja. Combine this fact with a little sprinkling of driver engagement from the 5 speed row-your-own ‘box and it makes the Waja a relatively competent tōge car.
The proof of this conjecture came when Misty attended the Breakfast Club tōge in Semenyih this February. It was an interesting, yet enjoyable experience with the Waja, according to Hunter. Yes it was among the few unremarkable cars there being a largely stock (sans the aftermarket alloys and a few stickers) Proton Waja, and it was slow and nearly every other car overtook Misty. But on the downhill runs, even amongst the fast-looking and actually fast cars, the ol’ girl was able to keep her head held high as she handled those corners like a champ. Thanks in part to the multi-link suspension keeping Misty on the black stuff. The gear change, Hunter commented was also slick for a mid sized sedan and with a new clutch, the shifts are as good as it gets.
Side note: This further proves that you don’t need to have a fast focused car to have fun as any car can be fun!
Being in near daily use has meant that Misty isn’t in the showroom condition she was all those years ago, but she wears her battle scars with honour. Hunter recalls that she was in a minor front end collision a few years back. Misty seemed to be leaking some fluids and to add insult to injury, the hood was dented in so he couldn’t get the bonnet open on the side of the road. Hunter suspected it to be a coolant leak, but even knowing that Misty still managed to waft all the way from KL to Johor before it was mended. The drive wasn’t the most relaxing, especially with one eye constantly on the temperature gauge watching whether the needle would rise, but thankfully the Waja managed to keep all its coolant within itself and it was just the bonnet that bore the brunt of the accident. One replacement bonnet and grill later Misty was as good as new.
When it comes to the sensitive (for car guys anyway) topic of selling Misty? Nah, Hunter replies. Misty will never be on sale. For one she’s practically worthless anyway so might as well just run her till she eventually dies. The parts supply for these Waja are decreasing though and she’s probably worth more in bits but you’ll never see a for sale sign on her if I have anything to say about it, remarks Hunter. If I had won the lottery, I still wouldn’t get rid of her. A new paint job, probably. A more powerful engine swap, definitely. But Misty will still remain in my possession, comments the proud owner. And that shows Hunter’s true passion towards Misty.
Hope you enjoyed this Common Car Story on Misty, the arctic blue Proton Waja. Many thanks to Hunter from All We Drive for this amazing story. Please do click on this link to check out his channel. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share his amazing videos!
If you have made it this far, please also do consider checking this fledgling Malaysian automotive site and sharing this story to everyone who will appreciate it.
One more thing, if anyone has a car story to share feel free to drop me an email at thecommoncar.driveeveryday@gmail.com . Please include the details of the car that you wish to share the story of. Preferably looking for cars and car stories from Malaysia from the KL and JB area, but anyone is welcome to drop me an email regardless of location barring probably Antartica (It’s a bit cold there. )