Ah, the Bentley Continental GT. The last time we drove it was on an epic run down Jebel Hafeet at midnight. We’re now too old for shenanigans like that, especially with a million-dirham car. So when we got the convertible version, the Continental GTC, we just did what any actual owner would do, and that is hit every hotel in Dubai this Ramadan to gauge reactions to the car.
The Hyundai Veloster is probably the weirdest modern car on sale today. Aside from the fact that it looks spectacularly flashy, it has one more trick up its sleeve. Or rather, three.
The Toyota 86 is probably the most overhyped sports car in history, reaching legendary cult status long before it was even launched, theoretically outrunning everything from Porsches to F-16s in the sell-as-much-magazines-as-possible media. Everybody keeps talking about how it marks the return of the Toyota “AE86” or whatever, even though no one even heard of that piece-o-dung 1984 Corolla coupe before it starred in an overblown-but-awesome Japanese cartoon called Initial D in 1999. It’s pretty easy for Toyota to make a better car than that, especially if half the parts are from Subaru. So how good is this car?
The last time we drove the BMW 335i, it was back in 2007, I had just graduated from college, and the car had two doors. It also happened to be one of the best cars I’d ever driven, and the only reason it didn’t end up on our recommended list was because it was expensive. Fast-forward to 2012, and there is a new model. And it still rocks.
The most expensive car we’d ever brought in for testing before was a Bentley Arnage. So it stands to reason that our previous record was just beaten by, what else, another Bentley. This time we drove the Mulsanne, a car that rings in at a cool Dhs 1.4 million. Try getting a bank loan for that.
It took a while. It took a long while. But we finally managed to get our hands on a supercar. A McLaren MP4-12C no less. Yes, we finally can remember the jumbled name of the car now.
We never drove the first generation of the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, a car that seems to be overshadowed by the Toyota 86 nowadays. But we did drive the 2013 version, which is essentially the same car, with a new front-end, new tail lamps and a new interior. And even though it still has the same engine as before, it is one hell of a car.
For certain reasons, we hadn’t brought home a Mercedes-Benz in over three years until this one, but it is interesting that the last Merc we fully tested back in 2009 also happened to be an ML 63 AMG. This new one is a fair bit different though.
We were planning on taking a hiatus from testing any more cars for the summer, but when the man from Chrysler offered me a Ram 1500 for the long weekend, I casually agreed to take it off his hands. I remember it being a handful to drive the last time I tried it, back when it was still called a “Dodge” Ram, so I wasn’t too keen on driving it again. But I was wrong.
We picked up this 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet only a couple of days after driving the Boxster S in Germany. The similarities were uncanny, but the 911 still was unique in its own right.