With the crossover market booming over the past decade, with 7-seater options particularly popular in the U.S. market, Volkswagen finally jumped on the bandwagon and created the Teramont, their largest SUV. Built in the States and known as the Atlas over there, the Teramont is a logical addition for the GCC market as well, even if it is confusingly placed between the Tiguan and the flagship Touareg in terms of price.
Audi officially launched the Q8 in the GCC a few months ago as their new SUV flagship, with a drive around Omani mountains. Late to the game when it comes to “four-door coupe crossover” thingies, the Q8 vaguely follows the design theme of the ugly BMW X6 and the Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class Coupe models, but does it in a much better job of combining an SUV with a roof design similar to a coupe.
Porsche recently held their international launch of the 2019 Panamera GTS and Panamera GTS Sport Turismo in Bahrain. Like the previous generation, the Panamera GTS sits between the 4S and Turbo variants, with enough options between the three to give potential buyers a variety of choices.
Chevrolet has entered the electric car market in the Middle East with the introduction of the Bolt EV. This model has already been on sale in the United States since late 2016, and then reached European shores as an Opel Ampera-e the following year. We were given a glimpse of the Bolt at last year’s Dubai Motor Show and it’s now available in UAE showrooms.
Roadsters aren’t the big-volume players in BMW’s line-up, but this genre has thrown up some of the Bavarian marque’s most iconic models over the years, dating back to the timeless 328 (1936-40) and sublime 507 (1956-59). In more recent times, we’ve had the offbeat Z1 (with its unusual vertically sliding doors) and the beautiful Z8 that served as James Bond’s ride in the 1999 blockbuster The World is Not Enough.
The Cullinan is a big deal for Rolls-Royce. And you know the new SUV is important to our region when the model hits UAE roads within weeks of the international drive event in the United States. While we weren’t invited to that U.S. one, we did get to try out the British carmaker’s first offroader in Dubai, if only on a strictly onroad drive.
Remember the BMW 8-Series? A large, eye-catching coupe built from 1990-99, it was in many ways a pioneer for the Bavarian brand. Apart from the low-volume M1 sold in the early-’80s, the 8-Series is the only BeeEm to date with pop-up headlights, and its other claims to fame include being the Bavarian brand’s only V12 model to be offered with a six-speed manual gearbox. What’s more, it was one of the company’s first vehicles to feature a multilink rear axle.
After more than a decade with just mild updates, an all-new Bentley Continental GT is upon us. We don’t mean to sound snooty, but we had driven different variations of the old model so many times (and Bentley was generous with new test cars annually) that at some point, we just stopped taking them because we couldn’t find much new to write about them. Yep, we said no to Bentleys. It was an excellent car, and we almost bought one for our long-term fleet years ago, but it felt like we had enough of it already. The new one changes all that with one major redesign.
We’ve already said before that the current Ford Mustang GT is quite possibly the best all-rounder sports coupe to come out of America ever. It’s still a fresh model, having hit the GCC only in 2015. However, a facelift as well as some thorough upgrades were introduced for 2018.
This is the brand new Ferrari Portofino, the carmaker’s new “entry-level” model, and one of the few cars in its (very high) price segment with a folding hard top. And unlike the previous California model, no one is going to claim that the Portofino is not a real Ferrari, because it looks suitably Ferrari-like whether the roof is up or down.