ISTANBUL, July 27 — Turkey’s automotive manufacturer Onuk showed Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today two of its sports cars, with an offer to collaborate with Malaysia in the automotive field.
Two of its sports cars, the supercar Onuk Sazan and the Onuk S56/G, were shown to the prime minister as he was about to leave home for Malaysia in the Sabiha Gokcen Airport here.
“They look capable. Actually I’ve already known about this for long,” he told reporters, referring to Turkey’s capabilities to produce supercars.
“But I did not follow up on this. When I found out about it I was not prime minister anymore,” he added, referring to his previous term.
“They are ready to collaborate with us, not only on sports cars, but other cars as well.”
Onuk is a company formed in 1993 that also design and builds naval crafts, especially speed boats and defence vessels.
According to Onuk, while its S56 was designed to “fill the low budget, low weight, high performance gap in the industry”, the Sazan was designed to be as light as possible — reaching 100km per hour from standstill in just four seconds.
Yesterday, Dr Mahathir offered Ankara Malaysia’s expertise in producing national automobiles, citing its own success with marques such as Proton and Perodua.
Turkey is among the world’s top 10 manufacturers of automobiles, mostly of foreign marques such as Fiat, Renault, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and Ford.
However in 2017, its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had announced his ambition for Turkey to produce its first domestic car by 2021, naming five firms that would form the consortium for the venture: BMC, Anadolu Group, Kiraca Holding, Vestel and Turkcell.
