A luxury car show is running at the Dubai International Financial Centre this week. Dubbed MotorVillage, it will run till April 3rd, and seems to partially be a direct-sales platform than strictly an auto show.
The Arctic Trucks-modified “Xtreme” version of the Toyota FJ Cruiser had been vaguely around before, for the past couple of years, sold on a custom-order basis while the Toyota Land Cruiser Xtreme got all the limelight. Now Toyota’s UAE dealer, Al Futtaim Motors, is offering the FJ Cruiser Xtreme as an official addition to the local line-up.
Police recently completed testing on one of the cameras to catch tailgaters on Hessa Street. According to officials, it is six times more effective than a standard radar.
The last time we got behind the wheel of a Dodge Challenger SRT8 was back in early 2011, driving a 2010 version with the 6.1-litre Hemi and standard bouncy suspension. Even then, it left a mark on our minds, more so than its two other rivals, as the best iteration of a true muscle-car that harks back to the hey-days of the 1960s. And then the 392 version came out in late 2011, with a host of upgrades, including a 6.4-litre Hemi and adaptive suspension. But this is the first time we got to try it out.
While idly trundling around the net, we came across what appears to be a pimped-up 2014 Toyota FJ Cruiser. It seems the accessorised model is called the FJ Street Limited Edition, and is offered exclusively by the Toyota dealer in the UAE, Al Futtaim Motors.
Mercedes-Benz built its reputation on luxury cars over the course of a century. Then there was that one time in the early 70s when they dabbled with a 4×4 for a military contract. That was the G-Wagen, which quickly went civilian later, but it wasn’t until the 90s that it evolved into the form it is today. Mercedes-Benz got the hint that the world is ready for a mainstream three-pointed-star SUV, and came up with the M-Class by the late 90s. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today, aside from the patriarch G-Class, the midsize M-Class and the compact GLK-Class,
Privately-owned midsize pickups are a legitimate market segment in several Asian and even Western countries. Here, they are almost exclusively used as commercial vehicles, driven by sweaty hard-working men who quietly laugh at moisturiser-toting management types trundling to office in oversized American pickup trucks. However, Isuzu feels there is a gap in the market for a good-sized “lifestyle” pickup, and hence, we have the Isuzu D-Max GT.
Cadillac has had many “rebirths” over the past two decades. The STS back in the day heralded a new kind of Cadillac. Now it’s gone. Then there was the first CTS. A great car, and incidentally, the first official test car we ever got, but that final bit of refinement was missing. Now we have the ATS. And this is as close to nailing it as they’ve ever come, if not doing so already.
Full-size sedans take a back seat to midsizers and compacts in the UAE, but they’re big business in Saudi Arabia, the largest automotive market in the GCC. And the Americans are especially good at building big sedans. The 2014 Chevrolet Impala is a very important car for General Motors, and the importance they gave it is apparent from the first time you lay your eyes on one.
Most arm-chair car enthusiasts who’ve never driven legendary American powerhouses such as the constantly-cloned Shelby Cobra or the overblown Vin Diesel-spec Dodge Charger have an idealised view of such cars and lament their demise. However, a car exists today that harks back to those brutal larger-than-life super-muscle cars. It’s built by Chrysler and it’s so out-of-sync with their usual offerings that they gave it a whole separate brand now — the SRT Viper. The Viper itself has a similarly-celebrated reputation, and we found out what it’s like on the streets of Dubai.