Volkswagen owners from across the region gathered at the Dubai Autodrome on the 21st April weekend at the largest ever exclusive event for the GCC. About 150 cars and 300 owners from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates participated in the invitation-only Volkswagen ‘Dub Drive GCC 2017’ event to showcase their cars.
Honda is adding to their portfolio of redesigned models with the introduction of the all-new 2017 CR-V in the UAE and GCC. Completely different, yet familiar as a CR-V, the compact crossover has some new tricks up its sleeve.
Arctic Trucks, the offroad-tuning company best known for building street-legal monster-truckish 4x4s in Iceland and made popular by Top Gear, has had a base in the UAE for the better part of a decade now, and most visible as Toyota’s locally-modified Xtreme range of 4x4s. Now there is a proper Arctic Trucks-branded Isuzu D-Max available, and we got to take one for a spin.
Lincoln is redoing their corporate face yet again, starting with the new Continental flagship sedan. The second model to get the brand’s new grille treatment is the MKZ midsizer. Tacked on as a facelift to the existing model, there are more changes than meets the eye.
Until the beginning of last year, McLaren’s bread-and-butter was the 650S, but it proved too impractical for many in the market for these cars. Then there was the 570S, which was meant to be softer-driving and more practical. Alongside it came the 540C, which was supposed to be even softer. And now there is the 570GT, which is supposed to be…even softer and more practical?
The Isuzu D-Max AT35, modified by Arctic Trucks, is now officially being offered in the UAE by Genavco, complete with gigantic fender flares and a tall lift kit.
There is nothing more controversial than vehicles like the BMW X6. Dreamt up by Bavarian marketeers as a “four-door sport-activity coupe”, it has spawned a few imitators, including the Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe. This here is the Mercedes-AMG GLE 63 S Coupe, one of the fastest SUVs on the planet right now. But is the performance enough to overcome its looks?
Let us get this straight — we didn’t intend to buy a Mercedes-Benz of any sort. Aside from a couple of AMG models, Mercedes-Benz is mostly the default choice of brand-biased individuals who grew up listening to their parents wax lyrical about how they aspire to own a car with a three-pointed star on the bonnet. It’s true, your parents were right in their infatuation — Mercedes-Benz actually was at the top of their game back in the day (and I personally owned one of those old ones), but they fell by the wayside long ago, starting to regain their mojo only recently,
The second generation of the “new” Volkswagen Beetle is a much more interesting car than the one before it, but it’s struggling to make headway in our GTI-loving market. So VW has been offering this R-Line kit for a while now, to spice things up.
It’s been about a year since the Nismo version of the Patrol took the UAE by storm. A sporty version of a legendary body-on-frame offroader? It was never done before. But it’s proven to be a successful concept, to the point where numerous non-Nismo Patrol owners took to the aftermarket to turn their regular versions into Nismo lookalikes. Oddly enough, we never got the chance to drive one for whatever reason, so finally asked for one. We were given the car that appeared in the TV ads, complete with non-standard shabab tint.