The Toyota Sequoia caused a riot among faithful followers of the Japanese brand when they released this behemoth in two-wheel-drive “city SUV” trim last year. The big guy had been on sale for years before that in the United States, being built there too. But once the recession hit, America’s new-found focus on “green” cars meant that excess supplies of the truck started being sent here. And now it is finally being offered in offroad-capable 4×4 form.
The Chrysler 300 is a remnant of the firm’s brief glory days, just half a decade ago, when the first real fruit of the DaimlerChrysler merger allowed the American company to create a balanced rear-wheel-drive exotic sedan using Mercedes-Benz underpinnings. It sold well, right up till the recession, at which point the focus shifted to fuel-efficient cars and suddenly Chrysler was considered a dinosaur by the fickle public. But the 300 remains an awesome car, even if going by looks alone.
The General’s good men sprung a surprise on me this weekend when they offered me a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS for a test-drive, after a last-minute cancellation by some other hack. The bigger surprise came when the car was home-delivered, because when I stepped in, it had three pedals. Indeed it was the manual Camaro SS with the 426 hp 6.2-litre V8. Rarely do I get overexcited about cars nowadays, but…AAWOOOGAAA!!!
The general media is rather cliched when it comes to reporting cars. “VW makes reliable cars.” “Audi has the best interiors.” “Chrysler has the worst interiors.” “Jeeps are unreliable.” None of those statements are true. That’s why I get pissed off anytime some car company executive refers to me as a “journalist.” I didn’t earn an electrical engineering degree, start my own business and take crap from my conservative father just to be lumped in with those corporate hacks. That said, the Jeep Cherokee is awful. But only in some respects. In many other aspects, it is rather cool.
We’d been asking for the 2010 Nissan Maxima since October last year. For reasons unknown, our five requests were not taken seriously, while crappy magazines were getting to keep GT-Rs for months at a time. But finally someone took notice and let us have a Maxima for three measly days. I can’t say I was too enthusiastic about test-driving a rebodied Altima, but our readers had been clamouring for a real review of this car, and I’m now happy to oblige.
The Cadillac CTS-V is simply obscene! It is so salacious that we believe it is banned in some neighbouring states for public indecency. Mothers cover their children’s eyes and other people stare when this thing passes by, even in places as lewd as that beach by the Dubai Marina. No European sports sedan has this much bling, short of a million-dirham Bentley. And the best bit is it outruns them all in power as well as price.
There are only a few tested cars that we’ve ever marked as major events in the history of this feeble website. There was the Nissan GT-R. There was the Bentley Continental GT. And this weekend, there was the Honda Civic Type-R, a car as overrated as this website, and yet so legendary. We indulge in making fun of Honda fanboys all the time, but this is one car that almost turned us into Honda fanboys.
The Chevrolet Cruze is yet another product that is part of General Motors’ competitively-revamped product line. With so much riding on it, we were hoping we had finally found something to topple the Honda Civic. Unfortunately, after our tests, the current Civic remains the “best” compact car of its time. However, the Korean-built Cruze is a much more palatable proposition, considering its base price undercuts that of the Civic by more than 25% in the UAE!
There was a time when BMW said they refuse to make an M version of the 7-Series because it would be too far away from the concept of the ‘M’ cars. They still believe that, so there is no M7. And then they went ahead and created the BMW X5 M. While the death of the original ‘M’ philosophy is lamented, the new ‘M’ philosophy opens the door to a whole new range of physics-defying vehicles that can finally take the fight to AMG, while butt-slapping Audi back to the hole they came out from.
So we finally get our hands on the all-new BMW Z4, if only because we now have friends within BMW. We suspect our tester, with 12000 km on the clock already, is really a 2009 rental model, but for the purposes of this preview we’ll refer to it as a 2010, to avoid appearing outdated. Remarkably, the car looks to be in perfect shape, which can’t be said for most test vehicles we get from Infiniti. Maybe the German firm is now concentrating on durability more than the Japanese themselves?