The Honda CR-V, among the best-selling cars in the UAE, has received a facelift for the 2010 model year. Unfortunately, there is no upgraded engine for the GCC version, but from what we could see, that doesn’t really matter in a popular crossover like this. It can sell solely based on its other features.
This urban comparo is about as meaningless as it gets, but for the sake of argument, we’ll give it a go anyway. We’ve had a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee V8 since late 2007, and this is the first time that we’ve managed to drive another Jeep vehicle since then. Our Grand Cherokee was the epitome of American 4x4s back in its day, with capable off-road and on-road performance, packed with leather, full-time 4WD and a V8. The Wrangler has always been a simplistic offroader, but the latest generation claims to be the most refined and practical Wrangler ever, with options such as four doors and Bluetooth,
Having never personally driven a Jeep Wrangler, I was actually looking forward to picking up this one from the local dealer for two days. Imagine my surprise when they handed me the keys to a modified Unlimited, fitted with a factory-original lift kit and other accessories.
After months of waiting while it did the rounds of art shows and what not, the Mini Cooper S Cabrio was finally delivered to our doorstep for three days, still in one piece and still bearing some stickers from its artsy experience.
It just so happened that when we secured the new-for-2009 Honda Jazz for a test drive, we also got a call from BMW’s rep offering us a Mini Cooper S Cabrio. We kept both, if only for a novelty comparo article later on. However, unfortunately or fortunately, we only got to keep the 118 hp Jazz for a less than a day-and-a-half, while we had the 172 hp Mini for three whole days. So we parked the Cabrio and trundled around Dubai exclusively in the Jazz for a day.
The new year is upon us. 2010 will be a critical year for DriveArabia.com that will decide whether this site continues to 2011 and beyond. While nothing special happened in 2009, there were a few key moments for us. We had our first offer to go abroad thanks to Nissan, to go to France. We lost our first chance to go abroad, because the French embassy wanted to process us like terrorists. We drove the GT-R, Camaro and Mustang. We got to keep a Volvo for a week. We held our first ever professional photo shoot. We started the MyRide community.
There was a time when General Motors poured all their resources into developing full-size 4x4s such as the Chevy Tahoe. The U.S. operation had pretty much sidelined the sedan market, churning out midsizers so embarrassingly bad that they turned to their Australian and Korean outfits when it came time to expand the GCC line-up. But as Americans started to give up their ever-hungry trucks for fuel-efficient cars, the General came up with the all-new “award-winning” Chevy Malibu.
As far as we know, we are the first people to review the 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in the desert. Everyone else drove it “off-road” at the launch event, to which we were not invited, but that was a carefully-planned event with easy gravel jaunts anyway. We took our Prado VX-L tester on the same dunes used by desert safari outfits in Dubai.
The 2010 Toyota “Land Cruiser” Prado is currently the most researched vehicle in the region. We got one for two days, and being the only one we’ve seen on the road so far, we would’ve thought that we’d be swarmed by middle-aged family men on the streets of Dubai, inquiring about this dream car. But we weren’t. We got a few people standing around staring at it here and there, but they were probably the intelligent ones. Because if you don’t concentrate hard enough, it is easy to dismiss it as the old model.
The 1st DriveArabia Meet was held last weekend, on Friday the 13th no less. Two of us organised it, and ironically enough, 13 people showed up for an event that was conceived just a couple of days prior this November. The turn-out was relatively great, considering it was competing for time with the Diabetes Walk, the Motorsports Festival and some Pakistan cricket match, all on the same day in Dubai. Also, we kept the meet intentionally low-key, so a smaller number of people could interact without getting lost in the crowd. These peeps are now in our inner circle.