Feature Stories

With all the controversy surrounding Volkswagen’s current woes with diesel cars, it is easy to forget that dirty diesel was never a viable environmentally-friendly alternative to petrol, ever. Diesel cars became a “thing” in certain parts of the world because they offered better mileage, which is all their buyers cared about, the environment be damned. But diesel cars have a variety of costly, heavy and inefficient add-ons to make them cleaner, just to meet tough emissions laws in Europe. If you want the cheapest form of energy for your car, there’s no better option than going electric. We tried out the all-electric VW e-Golf at Wolfsburg,

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The Cadillac CTS-V has been around for about a decade, but GM never quite figured out whether it was a compact or a midsize, and by their own chief engineer Tony Roma’s admission, couldn’t hack it as a rival to either the BMW M3 or the BMW M5, given its compromises to straddle the line. But things are much more focused this time around, with the latest CTS-V growing into a proper midsizer, leaving the compact super-sedan market to the ATS-V, which comes as a coupe too. We drove the company’s little new bruisers at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi this week.

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The Nissan Maxima made a name for itself in the 1980s and 1990s with a “Four-Door Sports Car” tagline that somehow worked back in the day, for a not-too-heavy V6-powered front-wheel-drive sedan. Of course, the game changed over the years as the Maxima stagnated for several years and then simply became a higher-trim version of the Altima, while shamelessly still coming with “4DSC” badges as standard. But the new one for 2016 already captured a lot of attention when it first popped up in photos several months ago. Is it finally more Maxima and less Maximbady?

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The Jaguar F-Type has become a sort of figurehead for the once-fading British luxury carmaker, leading the charge as the brand redefines itself as a more aggressively-sporty alternative to typical premium choices. The 2-door sports car debuted less than two years ago, but more variants have been added to the line-up this year, namely an all-wheel-drive option and a manual gearbox. We drove these new versions in the outskirts of New York this summer.

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It almost feels like Dodge is exclusively a muscle-car brand. Sure, they also peddle the excellent Durango currently, but at the moment, their brand seems to be defined by the Charger and the Challenger, with a bit of Viper thrown in as well. Muscle-cars are known to only be straight-line warriors, so Dodge saw it fit to let us try out their latest Challengers and Chargers at the Yas Marina circuit no less.

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We’re guessing this will probably be our most popular story for August. Did you know that the Hyundai Tucson is the highest-selling crossover in its segment in several countries, including the UAE? And to be honest, the outgoing version of the Tucson wasn’t particularly good to begin with, managing to outsell all its rivals simply by being cheap. But this new one is completely different from the ground up. And we went all the way to the Canary Islands to find that out.

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The Volkswagen Beetle is back in our part of the world. The last “new” Beetle was there for a decade, unchanged, which showed the staying power of that design. And well, the “real” Beetle before that — that stayed almost unchanged for the better part of last century. VW hasn’t gone crazy with this redesign, but has done enough to just about make out that this is a new model with a more sporty twist.

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The CL-Class is dead. Long live the S-Class Coupe. Oddly enough, before two generations of the Cl-Class, Mercedes-Benz’s largest 2-door offering was indeed called the S-Class Coupe before someone in marketing decided the name change. However, the German carmaker has decided to simplify at least some of their model names, and therefore we have the all-new S-Class Coupe for 2015. We briefly drove the S 63 AMG Coupe, and it makes quite a first impression.

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The Subaru Legacy is Subaru’s flagship sedan, and has been around since a long time, even if nobody knew. Overhauled for 2015, the Legacy now gets an entirely new design and a new engine choice.

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