International car launches are common in the automotive industry, where local journalists are flown to various exotic locations to drive a new model before anyone else. Of course, such trips aren’t common for us, but we did go on our second ever trip outside the GCC, to test-drive the all-new 2012 Porsche Boxster in its hometown of Stuttgart, Germany. It beats driving a Hyundai in Korea, that’s for sure.
Wait, it’s here? It took long enough, but the Toyota 86 has finally landed in the Middle East. In what has been hailed as the Japanese company’s game-changer, the 86 was officially launched in the GCC, at an event in Abu Dhabi.
My first car was a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.6 with an original AMG appearance package. I bought it in 2004, but back in 1990, AMG was an independent tuner specialising in Mercs, with the occasional work done on other brands. Eventually, Mercedes-Benz and AMG became partners, and then AMG completely became a subsidiary of the three-pointed star. Things have changed a lot since then, or maybe, things haven’t changed at all. AMG-badged cars continue to be hyper-active versions of regular luxury cars, but they are more powerful than ever. The latest cars we’ve tasted from the new-generation AMG line-up include the ML 63 AMG,
Ford is aggressively pushing products in the Middle East region nowadays, energised by the fact that their first-quarter GCC sales are up by 37% compared to last year. We are told they are concentrating on one segment at a time, and this summer, it is the turn of Ford’s truck line-up. To start it off, Ford Middle East invited us to the “Built Ford Tough” event held right here in the UAE.
Jaguar is reinventing itself, according to their new “Alive” marketing campaign. After years of peddling classically-handsome automobiles to traditionally-older gentlemen, things took a turn for the modern when the XF debuted a few years ago. And then the XJ continued that transformation. The XK was always around in the background. Now with three ultra-futurist models making up the range, they’ve revamped their logo and are heavily pushing their cars towards potentially-younger customers. Part of the GCC launch event for the campaign involved a round in the V6-powered XJ-L which debuted last year. This was the first time in our seven-year existence that we’d actually been invited to a Jaguar driving event.
When we were hanging out at the 2012 Nissan Micra’s GCC launch in the UAE, we heard that almost every British expat has had seat-time in its predecessors dating back to the 1980s, sort of like how everyone here has some experience with the Toyota Yaris. It is interesting then, that Nissan chose to finally launch the fourth generation in the Middle East to do battle with, what else, the Toyota Yaris.
It’s rather ironic that anyone who’s been to the Sub-continent, or even maybe Europe, has some sort of experience with Compressed-Natural-Gas cars. And yet, we being the largest automotive guide in the GCC, had never driven a CNG-powered car before. The fact that we are in the GCC might be the reason. But there is a real push by certain entities to bring in vehicles with cleaner emissions here, and Volkswagen threw their hat in the ring with the VW Passat Ecofuel, a car that is already offered in Europe, which can run on both natural gas and petrol.
It isn’t often that we get to fly to other countries to test-drive a car. So it was doubly interesting that our only fully-sponsored foreign trip of the year involves the 2012 Isuzu D-Max pickup truck. At the Bahrain Formula 1 circuit no less.
Kia, besides its sister-concern Hyundai, has been in a phase of rapid evolution over the past few years, rolling out several new models which are far superior than their predecessors and strong contenders to the current competition. One such new vehicle from the stables of Kia, is the all-new 2012 Kia Optima. First introduced in the UAE through an official media drive-event during late 2010, the new Optima has managed to gain respectable popularity in the mid-size segment solely due to factors such as affordability, build quality, value for money and visually-appealing designs. Nevertheless, it is still underrated when it comes to comparisons against its overpriced Japanese competitors.
We’ve never been to an event before where we drove so many different cars at once that all the names did not fit in the title of a story. At the recent “Mopar Power Drive” media event at the Dubai Autodrome, we drove the 2012 editions of the — in one big breath — Chrysler 300C V8, Chrysler 300 V6, Chrysler Grand Voyager, Dodge Durango, Dodge Challenger V6, Dodge Charger V6, Dodge Caliber, Dodge Ram 1500, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, Jeep Wrangler, Jeep Cherokee, Jeep Compass, and finally, to throw a curve-ball, the Fiat 500.
