The previous GMC Acadia was an odd one. Essentially a minivan in functionality, but disguised as an SUV, the Acadia was actually more practical and spacious inside than the Yukon. The new Acadia is a smaller vehicle as it undergoes a full reboot.
Morris Garages, the well-known (in Europe at least) British brand that’s best known for making little sports cars back in the day and hopped-up Rover-based sedans most recently before they shut shop. The brand eventually became a part of China’s SAIC, and they’ve launched their own steady stream of economy cars since then, culminating in the brand’s first crossover SUV — the MG GS.
When the all-new Toyota Fortuner debuted a year ago, it created waves with its new-age styling that still somehow looked like a tough offroader (unless, say, the poor attempt that is the new Land Rover Discovery). What we didn’t expect were all the other improvements, including an interior that is surprisingly upscale at first glance.
Ram — Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles’ truck brand — extended their Middle East line-up for 2017 with the addition of the new Ram 1200 metric-ton pickup truck as well as several new trim levels of the existing Ram 1500 full-sizer. We got a taste of these new trucks at a recent event in Dubai, with a bit of offroading around the Bab Al Shams area.
There are a few obvious things you should know about owning a luxury car. One is dealer maintenance and repair can be ridiculously expensive. The other is that most non-dealer garages don’t know how to maintain or repair a modern luxury car beyond the mechanical basics. So you can save money by going to non-dealer garages, but certain tasks can only be performed by the dealer. The tricky part is figuring out which is which without losing a ton of money on experimentation. We did exactly that with our Jaguar XK.
The Ford Edge Sport has been around since late last year, as the top dog in the redesigned Edge line-up. While we did drive the regular Edge Titanium in Jordan in 2016, the Sport is an entirely different beast.
This may sound a bit ridiculous initially, but Nissan Middle East has just announced a new concept to “revolutionise the way vehicles are evaluated for desert performance.” Developed by Nissan engineers over the past two years, Desert Camel Power uses a “scientifically proven formula to determine, in an accurately measurable and reproducible way, how a given vehicle will perform in typical desert off-road conditions.” It’s been a while since we graduated from engineering school, so we’ll just publish the specifics as told by Nissan.
Nissan invited us to a “surprise” launch event in Dubai, only telling us that it will be a crossover of some sort. That crossover turned out to be the 2018 Nissan Kicks. The more surprising news was that it will replace the Juke crossover and the Tiida hatchback in the carmaker’s GCC line-up, even though these cars will continue to be on sale in other markets such as Lebanon and Jordan.
Six months had passed since the first free service at 1000 km, so we took in our 2014 Nissan Patrol LE for its first paid service at the Dubai dealer.
I’ve never understood the SUV-coupe genre. They’re about as functional as a hollow plastic hammer, offering neither the cabin space of a conventional SUV, nor the dynamism of a low-slung coupe.