Letters & Questions

I haven’t posted letters on this blog for 5 months now. But I have been personally answering most of the email letters that has continued to pour in. It’s just that I’ve concentrated on building up other parts of the website, and I’ll have to say it paid off. This website is now the most popular English automotive portal in the GCC, in terms of visitors. There are now well above 100,000 users going through the pages of this site every month. This, of course, is only a small victory, as there are no benefits for me in this.

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So we went on a whirlwind tour of various ad agencies last month in a bid to get sponsorship for this “little” website, which happens to be the biggest English car portal in the region. After wasting all that time, all we’ve got are lame excuses and clueless rejections, while our smaller competitors enjoy the fruits of a good income. I have come to the conclusion that I will not waste this much of my own time any more, and will concentrate on my other income sources. Oh, but DriveArabia is going to continue as is, and every review I write will be a favour to the manufacturer,

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Before the Sharjah Auto Show, and just after the Ford Ride & Drive, we had received a Jaguar XKR Portfolio for a few days. As soon as I checked out the car, I realised it isn’t much different from the standard XKR we already drove earlier this year. So I offered the car up to a photographer to try her hand at automotive photography for a morning, the results of which will be displayed later. On to the backlog of letters.

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I’ve been thinking of adding long-term car ownership reports ever since I started this website. However, back in 2004, I only owned one (old!) car, and the car companies totally rejected the idea, especially since I was a nobody then (and I still am a nobody, but slightly less so). However, it seems local rags CAR ME and Wheels have convinced some agencies to hand them free cars for months on end. Their rosy updates and choice of cars are different from what I had in mind, so I am now trying again to secure a car for a long-term test,

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Volkswagen just sent me a press release (since I guess I am still on their mailing list) about the spectacular international launch of the new VW Golf in Iceland, and how more than a thousand journalists attended from around the world. It is almost as if they are rubbing it in my face that I didn’t get invited to this free trip (although I know they didn’t mean to). As a gift to them, I put up the 1999-2006 Audi TT in the car guide, complete with fun facts. Expect some 5-star reviews of the Golf in local magazines in the coming weeks,

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I occasionally find “complimentary” local car magazines lying around in coffee shops, since most of these rags are given away free rather than sold or recycled. I was reading one of the “leading” ones (aren’t they all “leading?”), and saw an awful review that copy-pasted stuff from press releases. Do you really need to know whether the “knuckles” in the suspension system are made of steel or aluminium? Do you even care enough to know that a car has knuckles? I sure don’t. I turn the page and there is a review for another car, with no engine or gearbox details mentioned whatsoever.

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This website’s financial situation is just ridiculous. Running solely out of my pocket, I am now proud to point out that we now have the largest English automotive website in the GCC (according to semi-accurate alexa.com), and yet, we hardly get call-backs from advertisers that we got in touch with. All those other corporation-owned car sites seem to be overflowing with ads and here we are, trying to prove that we even exist. I guess bullshit works in the sales business, as each of those other sites claim to be the “leading” one in the region,

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Over the past month, I think I’ve received more than 100 emails asking for help on which car to buy, among letters of praise and criticism. I did reply to all of them personally, but I might have to start publishing only a select few from now on, as the barrage of e-letters per month is enough to fill a book. These are some of the letters from a month ago.

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Here is the latest batch of letters to the editor, for the month of June. Glad to clear up any confusion about resale values of Toyota, Infiniti, Nissan…and VW.

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