We’ve driven the Jaguar XKR coupe at least twice before, so we expected this car to be familiar to us. But this here is the convertible version of the 2010 Jaguar XKR, which has received a slight facelift, a new gear knob, and a larger 5.0-litre supercharged motor that is ridiculously overpowering on the street.
With my brain still not used to the hunger at the onset of Ramadan, I am having trouble keeping up with my writing duties. However, keeping me company during the first week of fasting is a 2009 Volvo XC60. This is the first time I am driving a Volvo tester. And although I drove the XC60 at a track event many months ago, actually living with one is a completely different experience. The ergonomics of this crossover are complicated, and I’d usually be complaining about such things, but Volvo let me have the XC60 for an entire week,
We finally got out hands on a 2010 BMW 7-Series. Indeed, we’ve never driven any sort of 7-Series before, and we really needed to find out if BMW’s sporting DNA could translate to a large luxury sedan. The dynamics of the car are not shrouded in mystery any more. Meet the 2010 BMW 750Li — quite possibly, the best all-round luxury sedan we’ve ever driven.
We don’t like ragging on Nissan. Even though they have blatantly refused to give us ads, we like the company, if only because they give us access to their press fleet, however late we may get them. They also make good cars, starting from the satanic GT-R right down to our “recommended list” Tiida, all of which we’ve driven. But driving press-fleet cars after everyone else means we sometimes get abused cars with peeling trim, creased leather or below-average performance. However, the 2009 Nissan Murano we got wasn’t too old, having racked up less than 5000 km. But some previous journalist’s possible offroad excursion meant there was a loose panel beneath our Murano that kept clunking throughout our test drive.
I asked for a GCC-spec Nissan GT-R back in March, after it seemed every magazine had driven it. Four months later and we finally got it from Nissan Middle East. I had lost all enthusiasm for this car by then and was ready to show my displeasure in the review. But slipping into the driver’s seat for the first time, putting it in gear and then pressing the accelerator pedal, the first thing I said was…
The Mercedes-Benz ML 63 AMG is among the fastest 4x4s in the world. It held the title of world’s fastest-accelerating SUV for a while, but then the ugly Porsche Cayenne Turbo S took over the mantle this year. However, such statistics are too close to call. A difference in weather and road conditions was enough to change our 0-100 kph acceleration numbers. In this summer test, we couldn’t top the numbers we got from our Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 winter test. It is therefore better to judge a vehicle by its overall merits.
Mercedes-Benz rarely has cars available for testing. But when they do, they are usually very generous with the amount of time we get to keep the car. Indeed, we got to keep this black 2009 Mercedes-Benz CLC 230 for nearly a week. What most don’t realise is that a longer test drive is enough to change our minds about a particular car. Most car companies here stupidly think that giving us cars for longer will expose more faults. On the contrary, we had negative preconceptions about the CLC since the day it was launched. But driving around in one for so many days restored our faith in Mercedes-Benz.
I first saw this exact red Infiniti G37 Coupe at its UAE launch in Dubai more than a year ago. Since then, magazine after magazine kept grabbing this press car from under us for their stupid comparison “tests” against the BMW 335i, until the red car became so “old” that we didn’t bother asking for it any more. Anyway, since my request for the Nissan GT-R was pushed even further away (as expected), I asked for a G37 Coupe to pass the time. It turns out that red car is still in press circulation, with 16,000 km on the clock,
We first got wind of the 2010 Lexus RX’s imminent launch when I and my PR buddy did the rounds of ad agencies a few months ago, trying to get advertisements for this website. At the time, Toyota UAE’s ad agency said they will not give us their upcoming Lexus RX ads because they only wanted to target women, and apparently we don’t have enough women visiting this site. A month later, we see ads for the RX all over MBC Action, AutoMiddleEast, Car ME and every other possible men’s media. While we were flat-out rejected for the ad campaign for flimsy reasons,
I wasn’t planning to ask for the 2009 Honda City, but when Honda ME called me up and suddenly offered it to me this weekend, I agreed as usual. The previous Honda City was a cartoon-mobile that was embarrassing to be seen in, but this new one looked interesting from the day that spy shots started appearing last year, enough for me to dedicate posts to it.