AbgTutor dot Com: Perodua Jaguh – ‘an elaborate hoax’ indeed

Monday, 29 July 2013

Perodua Jaguh – ‘an elaborate hoax’ indeed

Much ado about nothing, as it turns out. The supposed Perodua Jaguh brochure leak going around the past couple of days may have caused a lot of hullabaloo, but it turns out that the entire thing is nothing more than a ruse – the Jaguh doesn’t exist, and this has been confirmed by the person who came up with the whole thing.

Rendering wiz Theophilus Chin came clean earlier today on what he says was “an elaborate hoax” with the Jaguh renderings. As he puts it:

“There’s no such model (yet) by Perodua. Though Perodua did say they are mulling the possibility of producing sedan cars. But no one knows if the Perodua sedan is going to be a rebadge of existing Toyota/Daihatsu model, a sedan variant of the Myvi (engineering cost will be too high for this), or more ambitiously, a total Perodua self-design car (perhaps a productionised version of the Bezza concept).

So in preparing this fake brochure, as many of you have spotted when the “spy picture” first went viral, was that I referred heavily to the Alza brochure. All the Toyota badges were replaced with Perodua’s, including the badges in the interior pictures.

As for the car’s exterior, I moved the side indicator to the mirror housing, and also gave the Jaguh door handles from the Myvi. I reshaped the rear lights, trunk and bumper slightly for a less slabby look. At the front, I gave the Jaguh slimmer lights, a more rounded bumper and most obviously, the smaller grille. On the side, the Jaguh gained some side skirting and again from the Alza, the wheels.”

We’d caught more than a few anomalies with the leaked pix, more so when the purportedly complete set came about. The initial front shot showed a lightly-modified Toyota Etios sedan with a Perodua face, and the slimmer front grille, Myvi-style pull-type door handles and Alza-sourced alloy wheels were noticed. The MyVAP and sliding second-row seats mention didn’t help.

The surfacing of the rear shot (and interior) made the argument that it was all faked even more convincing. Giveaway points were the manual shifter, non-studio shots and the model grades in the brochure, more Toyota-esque than Perodua. The chosen name was another – Modenas already has the name ‘assigned’ to its 175 cc two-wheeled cruiser.

Whatever the case, the ruse worked a charm, enough for it to be reported in the mainstream news and for Perodua to have had to respond to the matter with statements. We were told by the automaker that “a feasibility study has been completed for a sedan. Just come to KLIMS 2013.” The suggestion is that a concept should break cover then.

We’ve been told that a Perodua sedan is very real indeed, as company officials have previously said that they’re studying the idea of going down the sedan route. The car in question is tightly based on a Toyota Etios, with a Perodua face grafted on it.

Right, that should put an end to all things Jaguh for now, you think? And yes, very nice try, Theo.