Malaysia's Proton X50 will ride and handle better than China's Geely Binyue

If you’ve been following us since last year, you would know we’ve test driven the Proton X50’s donor car the B-segment Geely Binyue in China, driving it on a variety of local roads.

We love the interior and its straight-line performance, but not its handling and ride comfort. In fact, we pointed out that the Binyue’s ride and handling are the two most disappointing aspects of the car.

The ride was terrible as the dampers were unnecessarily stiff and the engine’s 177 PS output is not matched by an equally capable chassis. The steering is vague and the dampers are poorly calibrated to allow drivers to exploit the engine’s full potential.

The dual-clutch transmission also doesn’t creep forward in traffic, and if you don’t active the Hill Start Assist, the car will roll back.

Thankfully, the local team at Proton is aware of the Binyue’s shortcomings and have done a lot of work to improve it.

Speaking at a media preview event in Sepang earlier today, Vehicle Chief Engineer (E1) En. Noor Hisham Ismail shared that the Proton X50 will feature a revised chassis setup that’s different from the one used in the Geely Binyue.

For example, the car’s electric power steering has been re-tuned to provide better feedback and sharper response. Like the Proton X70, steering feel can also be adjusted but unlike the X70’s two levels of adjustment, the X50 can do up to four different settings.

Springs, dampers, anti-roll bar have all been changed to better suit Malaysian requirements. All those ‘spyshots’ of camouflaged cars on trade plates driving around local roads, it’s not for show.

The local team was gathering data on a variety of local roads, fine-tuning the X50’s suspension. It's also worth pointing out this is the first time the Geely Binyue is converted to right-hand drive. 

The media preview session is done at the Sepang circuit, which doesn’t provide any meaningful feedback on the car’s ride comfort, but looking at past efforts by Proton, from the humble Proton Saga to the X70, they all offer very good, if not class-leading ride and handling, we have little reasons to doubt Proton’s claims.

Apart from the superior ride and handling, our Proton X50 also gets rear air-conditioning vents and two USB charging ports.