It’s not everyday that I get a call to come down for a press event in Abu Dhabi, a couple of hours before the actual event. Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but this time it was a chance to drive, briefly, cars from the Rolls Royce range. The BMW-owned firm had two Ghosts and one Phantom lined up for a limited excursion around the streets of Abu Dhabi. While not a proper test drive, a Rolls Royce is still a Rolls Royce after all.
The 2nd DriveArabia Meet took place on Friday the 9th of April, 2010. Again, two of us organised it, and this time 17 people showed up, most of them new people who did not come the first time round, and even an off-duty journalist from an upscale magazine. Again, our little street party was competing with events such as some classic car auction at Times Square Mall and some BMW safety campaign at Creek Park.
RM Auctions, the world’s largest collector car auction house, will drop the hammer on an outstanding private collection of high-powered muscle cars in June as part of a single-day sale in San Diego, California.
Kia is putting a lot of faith into their all-new flagship model, the 2011 Cadenza. In fact, they are going all out to promote the full-size sedan. While even large outfits like Ford and VW cheap out at media driving events, Kia lined up close to 30 brand-new cars for the day in March. In fact, the fleet of Cadenzas was so big that most of the gathered GCC media scribes ended up one-person-per-car. I certainly enjoyed my privacy when pushing the limits of the car, instead of worrying about any aging passengers vomiting in the passenger seat.
As is common knowledge by now, the 2010 Nissan Patrol was launched in Dubai on February 15, at an event on an offroad course within the Jebel Ali Shooting Club. Apparently the course will be used for customer test-drives once the all-new Patrol goes on sale. We have exclusive photos of the course, courtesy of our photographer Faisal Khatib.
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,
The Mini started life in 1959 as a British car for the masses. Built by the company later known as Austin-Rover, the little car was so cheap that Ford dissassembled one and tried to replicate it, but couldn’t do it cost-effectively and gave up. That Mr. Bean original was in production right up till 2000, when BMW bought out the firm and redesigned the Mini as an expensive niche model. But by 2001, there were already a slew of modern affordable cars to take its place, not least of which is the Honda Jazz. Both the Mini and the Jazz are now in their second generation.
Renault’s truck division introduced their new Kerax truck models at an event in Dubai. They also took the opportunity to introduce the Sherpa military 4×4 in civilian guise for the first time in the GCC. Also at hand were two of the 12 vehicles that went on a “cape to cape” expedition from Norway to South Africa to prove the durability of the trucks.
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 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.