Asian Car News

“Real” journalists with Western passports fly to foreign destinations every other week, fully paid for by carmakers, with 5-star hotel stays and business-class flights. For that, all they have to do is “review” a car. Of course, third-world jerks like me don’t get foreign invites all that often, especially since I reveal more than just the test-drive itself. The couple of invites that I did get, I couldn’t go mostly due to visa hassles. So when Hyundai’s UAE dealer invited me for a three-day trip to South Korea to test-drive the all-new 2012 Hyundai Elantra, I agreed of course.

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The Renault Koleos, a rebadged compact crossover built in Korea, has never really sold well in the GCC since its launch a couple of years ago. So the carmaker is going at it a second time with a facelifted model for 2012.

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Toyota USA has unveiled their all-new 2011 Lexus LS 460 Touring Edition which is essentially a body-kitted version of the ongoing LS 460 model with few other enhancements.

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Some of you may have noticed that my brother Marouf does not write news articles for us any more. That’s because he is now a web editor at a sports newspaper in Abu Dhabi. And that means he has to drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and back everyday, a distance of 270 km daily. We’d already sold our Peugeot 307 2.0 last year, I wasn’t going to have him rack up miles on my fuel-hog Jeep or my exotic BMW, and our Renault Safrane is in use by the Old Man of the house. So he was doing the daily road-trip in our trusty old 1997 Toyota Corolla,

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The Honda Jazz, a sub-compact hatchback, is the kind of car that should be dominating its segment. And yet, it is the Toyota Yaris and the Nissan Tiida that have a stranglehold on sales, making the Jazz a niche product. For a while, we thought it was the price. Starting at a ridiculous Dhs 63,999 nowadays, and topping out at Dhs 71,999, you could buy a midsize sedan for that kind of dough, let alone a pint-sized runabout. But there was a time many years ago when the Jazz was actually cheap, and even then it wasn’t a familiar sight on Dubai roads.

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So here comes another visual treat for the hardcore Honda fanboys from Mugen, Honda’s racing arm. And this time it isn’t a boring Accord or a Civic sedan, but a more purposeful CR-Z hybrid coupe, Mugen’s version being dubbed the CR-Z Mugen.

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Al Majid Motors, the Kia dealer in the UAE, officially launched the all-new 2012 Kia Picanto at their showroom in Dubai, although the car has been quietly on sale for a month now.

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Our 2009 Renault Safrane hit the 10,000 km mark, so we took it in for a dealer service in Dubai. Making the appointment a day earlier by phone was hassle-free, and we dropped off the car at 10 am in the morning.

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Arabian Automobiles, part of the AW Rostamani group and the exclusive dealer of Nissan, Infiniti and Renault in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, has launched a massively-expanded vehicle servicing centre at its existing Ras Al Khor facility which will be open 24 hours, 7 days a week.

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