Is Quest motors manufacturing cars in Zimbabwe?
Claim: Quest Motors is selling a Proton Persona car which is manufactured locally
Verdict: Misleading. Quest Motors only assembles the car and does not manufacture it.
Source: A poster circulating on Twitter claimed Quest Motor Manufacturing had manufactured the Proton Persona at its Mutare factory.
Full story: A Twitter user share a poster from Quest Motor Manufacturing advertising the Proton Persona vehicle which claimed the car was made in Zimbabwe.
It turns out Quest is only assembling the vehicle and not manufacturing them as implied by the poster.
Quest Motors Manufacturing Sales Executive, Felton Chakazamba said the advertised car is a demo vehicle.
“Apparently or what normally happens is before you do anything or before your assembly especially when it comes to vehicles, you bring what you call demo vehicles and the demo vehicle is the one that they normally use to build the local gist where by when you bring in a kit you should have the one which is dismantled to try and make some gist where by you will start now assembling,” said Chakazamba.
“We don’t make, we do assemble, but you see when assembling there are so many things that also involve the local components, local raw materials, but assembling and building are two different things”.
He said Quest Motor Manufacturers is in the process of assembling the proton persona.
“We are in the process of assembling this vehicle, the one that you are seeing is the one that we brought in as a full built vehicle which we normal breaks in so that we start building the local ones, locally here, we starts assembling here, so the3 one that we got, these are demo vehicles, but the kits are on the way coming so that we start assembling,” said Chakazamba.
Proton Car is the national car brand of Malaysia. The brand was established in the early 1980’s at the behest of the Malaysian government, and later reverted to semi-private ownership under DRB Hicom. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group purchased 49.9% of Proton Cars. Proton was born in Malaysia, but quickly became a recognized global brand with exports across Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and Russia.
Quest Motors which started operating in 1960 as Australian Motor Corporation is mostly known as a car assembler. Quest currently holds the franchise for Japanese manufacturers Mitsubishi, Toyota, Suzuki, Chinese makes such as Foton, JMC and Chery as well as for German car maker, BMW.
