Such is the granular focus of the engineering team during the creation of the Proton X90. Just like the X50 and X70 that preceded it, many millions of test kilometres were racked up.

To be specific, over 1.2 million km of testing were done for the new three-row SUV. "For the development, we started from the mule to the mass production car, so every variant we have tested for the suspension tuning," explained the model's Vehicle Chief Engineer, Zabani Bin Hj. Yaakob.

"During the development, the damper adjustments were not fixed. Only at the final stage, when we have the good one [suitable to be used on our roads], then that's in the current mass-production [car], he continued.

"So that is tuning. We still have tuning until the end, that is the development for the suspension," Zabani said.

Also read: Ride, handling, comfort: The Proton X90 was benchmarked against the Mazda CX-8, Hyundai Santa Fe

At least in publicly, the X90's test mules were spotted since 2021, which says at least two to three years of development work went into the model, accounting for works done behind closed doors. No doubt most of that resulted in the car adopting a unique-for-Malaysia multi-link rear suspension setup, an improvement of its Geely Haoyue base car's torsion beam array.