Dubai

This website’s financial situation is just ridiculous. Running solely out of my pocket, I am now proud to point out that we now have the largest English automotive website in the GCC (according to semi-accurate alexa.com), and yet, we hardly get call-backs from advertisers that we got in touch with. All those other corporation-owned car sites seem to be overflowing with ads and here we are, trying to prove that we even exist. I guess bullshit works in the sales business, as each of those other sites claim to be the “leading” one in the region,

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The 2009 Hummer H3T, which was revealed in the United States ages ago, has finally been given the go-ahead for a GCC launch in November this year, after months of testing in Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

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Volkswagen Middle East has recently introduced their Jetta GLI in this region, years after it originally debuted in America. The Jetta GLI is essentially a sedan version of the Golf GTI, except that it looks awful and is built in Mexico.

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The 2009 Ford Fusion debuts in the Middle East this September. The Fusion, based on the older stretched Mazda 6 platform and designed for America, is a bit of an odd choice to bring to the GCC, especially when the Euro-market Mondeo is already sold here.

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A lot can be said about the epic Hummer H2 on the rocks and in the desert. But what about inside the city? How the heck can those tiny men and big women owning these things manage on a daily basis? We finally found out, thanks to GM lending us their tank for four days.

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The all-mighty Road & Transport Authority has now benevolently lifted the ban on carpooling, to allow the humble residents of Dubai to share rides to work with co-workers. But first, you have to take their permission by applying for a piece of paper that will give you limited rights on who you are allowed to transport.

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So a few weeks ago, the staff manning the front desks at the Immigration department made my father run around different counters over two days as he tried to get a residence visa for my college-going brother, since the clerks were on a power-trip and kept asking for random bits of unneeded paperwork, which in the end were discarded without being checked. Incidentally, a few days ago, while dropping my mother off at the airport, I argued with red-shirted staff as they weren’t letting me pull my mother’s heavy suitcase up till the first x-ray scanner (much before the actual check-in counters,

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One of our readers, Mohamad, pointed us to a thread at nissan-arabia.com, showcasing photos of a consignment of seven American-spec 2008 Nissan GT-R models which have made their way to Abu Dhabi for local customers who can’t wait till next year’s release of a GCC-spec version. The same reader also spotted a GT-R at a Nissan workshop in Dubai, probably used for technician training. Yet another reader, Don, spotted the all-new 2009 Nissan Maxima trundling around at a freezone in Dubai, which is the first real confirmation that the new Maxima is indeed coming to the GCC.

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Dubai’s Road & Transport Authority (RTA) has, over the last few weeks, come up with various ideas that they are going to implement over the coming months. Some of these ideas seem to be confidential in nature, but Gulf News somehow always gets their hands on official sources.

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We never get any invites to Mercedes-Benz car launches, and haven’t had any test-drive cars made available to us in years. However, their commercial vehicles division operates independently, and they invited us out-of-the-blue to the local launch of the Sprinter workvan. What caught our attention was the venue — Dubai Autodrome. We just had to go to this one.

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