Our 2009 Renault Safrane continues to chug along reliably thanks to its Nissan underpinnings, as we predicted back when we bought the car new in 2010. Well, reliably except for the power windows that is.
In the Gran Turismo Polonia motor rally in Poland yesterday, the driver of a Koenigsegg CCX lost control and crashed straight into the crowd.
Land Rover, in association with Al Tayer Motors, launched the all-new 2013 Range Rover Sport, at an invite-only event at Meydan Hotel in Dubai earlier this month. We received a formal invitation directly from the dealer, and on hearing about this, the editor of this site asked us to write about our impressions as he didn’t want to attend the event himself to “avoid the crowds,” even as he got an invite himself for being a Range Rover customer.
The sub-compact market is a lucrative segment that’s dominated by a select few. With the Toyota Yaris and the Nissan Tiida laying waste to competition by everyone from Chevrolet to Volkswagen, the latest entrant to try their luck is Peugeot. They already had the little 208, but needed more of an edge in terms of space versus price. And so, we have the Peugeot 301, a car designed for “emerging markets” that concentrates on cabin space above all else.
A never-mentioned fact about us is that, back in early 2005, a month or two after we started this website, the first test car we officially got offered was an Aston Martin DB9. What’s even worse is that, just as I sat in that car to drive off, we found out that none of us in the crew were eligible to drive it, since we were all under 25 at the time and insurance wouldn’t cover us. In the end, all I got to see was the fancy door handles and the cool interior with the button-operated gearbox, both giving a sense that the Aston was way ahead of its time.
Aston Martin has revealed the new Vanquish Volante convertible. It boasts the same engine as the hardtop coupe, which is the 6.0-litre V12 producing 565 hp and 619 Nm of torque.
What you see here are “spy shots” of the upcoming new sports car by Mercedes-Benz, these posed photos being handed out by the German carmaker themselves.
Porsche recently offered us a day with their sportiest SUV, and we took it. It’s a lemon-green 2013 Cayenne GTS, slotting in between the Cayenne S and the Cayenne Turbo. According to the specs, it’s not quite as fast as a Turbo, but apparently it’s quicker around the corners.
A new company called Lotus Motorcycles, a joint project of Kodewa, car designer Daniel Simon and the Holzer Group, has apparently been established to design and build the first motorcycle under the badge of the long-running sports-car manufacturer. The bike will be named Lotus C-01, and is being billed as a “hyper-bike” by the company.
The other day when we went to pick up a Peugeot 301 test car from the Peugeot showroom in Dubai, we were surprised to see the 408 sedan there. It seems the local dealer is quietly offering the Chinese-built Peugeot 408 sedan as a 2014 model in the UAE.