No, don’t get me wrong I’m not trying a Paul Tan here. This is just my personal opinion and got nothing to do with the quick and the dead.

When I first heard of Perodua planning to release a successor to Kembara somewhere in March I was a little unmoved. To be honest Kembara was not the type of SUV that I would be looking forward to drive to work. I just hate it because of it’s a little ugly to me. Maybe ugly doesn’t really mater but heard there’s a lot of problem with Kembara like the lower gear is not low enough to take on the so damn best roads in Sarawak - Not the highway but the road to the unknown. So, I thought that this would be another tin car in the making.

Nautica, that’s the name given to this shorter version of Toyota Rush and also Daihatsu Terios. They looked the same to me, well maybe slightly different. This perodua baby was launch on the 9th May 2008 and I managed to catch a glimpse of the real thing at The Curve, Mutiara Damansara a few weeks ago. So, I’m gonna take you on tour to see this Perodua baby.

“Nautica” derives from the Latin term “nauticus,” meaning “sailor” or “navigator.” And so in this case I don’t se any point naming it nautica because I don’t think you can drive this baby in the sea. If it can, good heaven then. Maybe because it sounds cool, Naw-ti-kah so that’s why the name is nautica. Notty-Ka? Well, we never know why in the first place. Let’s forget about that and just concentrate on the baby itself shall we?

The Perodua Nautica is essentially a Perodua-badged version of the short wheelbase Daihatsu Terios/Toyota Rush. The front bumper and grille is different, and these along with the rear bumper are made locally in Malaysia, while the rest of the car comes completely assembled from Japan. For lighting, you get foglamps and projector halogen headlamps while the rear brake lamp cluster use conventional bulbs.

Source : http://paultan.org/topics/cars/perodua-nautica-suv/

Maybe that justifies why the car is premiumly prized at a staggering RM89k for Peninsular market and RM91k-RM92k for Sabah and Sarawak market. That’s the ON THE ROAD price plus insurance. It’s quite expensive for a Perodua car I must say.

The rooms inside is quite spacious for a compact car as Perodua is always famous with releasing compact cars - Except for Rusa I guess. You can sleep and play hide and seek at the back. You can also have your dog and its house moved in at the same time. This is simply awesome can you imagine? You might be able to put your mini fridge at the trunk if you want! Unbelievable! Nope, that’s not the case, but the back part of the SUV is quite spacious.

See that two seats at the back? You can pulled it down to have more space for you to run around naked and get horny.

No, I did not make it to test the thing out by running around naked. Too crowded, everyone wants to go in. Only if I did …

The overall design of the car is actually not bad. I’m quite impressed. Back lights, I don’t know what they call it. Is it tail lights? Whatever lah. I played numerous racing games all of my life but what I failed to take note was which one are head lights and which one are the tail lights. Bummer!

So, which one is head which one is tail?

The wheels are 16 inch alloys with 215/65R16 tyres. I know you dirty lil bastards will just go to the garage the very next day and change the whole wheels into a more fancy ones. So do you think that’s cool huh? Dasar lanun la you all.

Now, let me take you to the front interior. It is not as fancy as any other Japanese car or even Korean. It’s very simple, the dashboard and all and it’s very very plasticky. The same feeling you get when you drive your choo choo cars when you were young. You know like those cars in Bob The Builder, that kind of plastic.

and more plastic to come

the door part. yeah, I know it sounds lame but bear with it. I’m not a car expert or what.

But I must say I like the steering.

The bumper is very much Perodua-like, ugly and so pok uchak barieng. You know what I’m saying? I mean, they just want to be Perodua by hook or by crook the bumper must look as pok as Perodua, full stop!

It does look like one of those Naza Ria cars from this angle

So, what do you think? Overall I think the car was okay, we have yet to know the performance yet. What I have been told was that the fuel consumption is very much average like any other car. With petrol prices are alsways on the rise we have to be carefull of what car to buy, eventhough it’s Malaysian. Why? Because I say so. If a Honda consume less petrol then you buy Honda lor, screw those Malaysian cars. Banzai! If la ..

The only thing that I’m not so happy about this car is just the price. It’s a bit too pricey to me. I rather get myself a Vios or a Sentra. I mean it!