When I first placed the order for the Inspira, I laid down the booking fee where the salesman took down the specification that I wanted for my car. Let's be honest, in Malaysia there are basically not much optional extras that you could normally put onto a car that cost less than RM100,000. What they do have are packaged trim levels that "thinks for you" on what you would generally want in the same model for a certain price range. This makes buying a new car very boring since you can't select the option to have fabric seats but with the navigation package. It usually becomes a trim level of leather seats and navigation package. What this does however, is that it makes the used car market very easy for buyers. Just selects your car based on the trim levels and forget about what the previous owner spec'ed for the car.
The end result is that people that are considered crazy by Malaysian standards can't get a lower trim level car (basically a manual) that can be spec'ed to the options that they want. "You want leather seats for your manual sedan? What are you? Crazy? You can't do that! Leather seats are for people that drive automatics!" I swear, that is what Malaysians are thinking, or at least the Malaysian car industry, that is only the poor drive manuals. Why shift your own gear when you can have the car do it for you. Why shag your girlfriend when she can just get a dildo. I digress, there are need for automatics, but for people are that looking into some sort of driving fun in everyday situation, putting a competent manual in a normal car can be very entertaining.
The main reason (80% of the reasoning) that I bought the Proton. Inspira is because of the 3 pedal Manual goodness. If Honda brought in the Civic FD2/FD10 in manual guise, I would have bought it. If Mitsubishi brought in the Lancer Ralliart in Manual I would have bought it. At this moment, I'm heavily considering the FD2-R just to enjoy the last Japanese manual transmission sports sedan.
Back to the Inspira. I'm having the manual transmission. I wanted the 2.0l matted to the manual transmission. I wanted it in white. I wanted leather seats. I sorta wanted the electronic folded side mirror. I wanted it to be spec'ed just like a 2.0l Lancer GT with Manual Transmission but at Local Assembled prices God dammit! What did I get? A 1.8l MIVEC 4B10, black, fabric seats and manual folded side mirror. Hey! I've got a manual!
This is Malaysia, the land of no optional extras. And do you know what was the kicker? The 2013 model has a waiting list of more than 6 months, while as the CVT models have basically no wait list. This shows that either the production volume for the manual is very low, or there are more people like me interested in the manual version of the car. I haven't met any in Miri for the later. I asked the salesperson on the delivery of my car and he would just dodge the question. Kudos to him for not lying. So, he pocked around and offered a 2012 model from another division (Kuching) about 1000 kilometers away and it was in Black. I've asked for a discount since it was a 2012 model. They discussed with the dealer in Kuching and agreed to give a substantial discount. There was a total of RM10,000 discount on my car which brought down the price to RM71,000 for my 1.8 liter manual Inspira in Black.
I got the car 3 days later.
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