Back in our diploma days, around 2015-2016, our friend had a 1990 Proton Saga 1.5 Megavalve, yes, the old square one. It was the oldest car in our campus parking lot along with mine, a 2003 Hyundai Getz. We both loved our cars and even used it for a street-racing short video assignment, yes we know they’re both quite terrible and slow, but as car nerds, we both loved and cherished them.
My friend's Saga
Before my friend brought his Saga here, he commuted with his motorcycle, so when it was the time to bring his car to campus, everyone got hyped up, it’s not every day a student brings an old Proton Saga to university, we were used to seeing a sea of (then brand new) Axias and Irizs. It was blue with light gray cladding, the mileage was clocked at 300,000 km, the car has been driven hard but still going strong. Power comes from the Megavalve 1500cc, quite the brag back then and is bolted to a 5-speed manual, it was originally an automatic, but #manuallife and of course, the extra gears. He also never bothered to fill the car with more than RM 10 worth of fuel, it mostly ran on fumes.
Yes we thought we looked really cool ๐
It has all the typical traits of an old Proton car, you need to slam the door to shut it properly and the front automatic windows need some assistance to full wind up. One thing I noticed is the car is very dark when driven at night, maybe old cars just didn’t have plenty of lighting? The interior my friend’s car has been re-layered to cover the old worn out, the original paint of the car was red and it has aftermarket wheels, though these wheels are for some reason, very common on older proton cars.
When he brought the car to campus, we decided to take in for a joyride later that night. We were juniors back then and it’s not technically allowed for juniors to bring their cars, we can’t even register them in campus, but so many students broke this rule (including me). We left at around midnight and went around the Tanjung Malim town and small neighbourhoods, enjoying the night breeze and the fart-cannon exhaust system spewing tiny amounts of white smoke.
After driving for some time, we decided to take a detour that my friend was very certain it was a way back to our campus, it was very much not. Soon, as we went deeper into this unknown neighborhood, the four of us began to wonder what is this place? We’ve never been to this part of Tanjung Malim before. So we kept on driving until we reached a T junction, my friend turned right and the road got narrower, towards the end, we saw something that we didn’t really want to this late at night on a quiet place.
An old mansion of some sort, riddled with vines and surrounded by drooping trees, it was dark at night, but somehow, the house’s aura made it look even darker. As we crept closer, we knew that this wasn’t the road back to campus, I mean obviously, a huge dark abandoned mansion is a sign that probably would say “go away”. “Patah bailk” we all said, and so my friend did a three point turn, and out of all the times it had to happen, it happened. The car died, and I was sitting on the right side of the rear seats, facing the house, windows open, I did what I only could do, roll up the rear windows as fast as I could, as if that could have saved me from anything. After begging the car to start, it finally did, and we sped off into the night .
Finally we found a way back to campus, and we all went back to our dorms. The next morning, we did some digging into this old mansion, turned out, it was a haunted house and that there have been stories of things “waiting” over there. We planned to go back in the morning but never did, for one thing I literally stared at the front door of this creepy house, and we didn’t want anything following us back.
Those who aren’t superstitious won’t find this story scary or entertaining, but we had plenty of stories when we were on the road back in our diploma days. Another one, for another day.