Maserati’s GranTurismo has now been soldiering on for 10 years, but the stylish coupe – and cabrio – have now come in for a final round of upgrades to keep the car fresh until an all-new replacement finally arrives over the coming year or two.
The last time we did a muscle-car comparo back in 2011, the Mustang still had the suspension of a bullock cart, the Camaro was a heavy tank with slit windows, and the Challenger was the size of the Titanic. Fast-forward to 2017, and the Mustang has now become a refined tea-sipping aristocrat; the Camaro is a lighter, smaller car with even slittier windows; and the Challenger is still the size of the Titanic, except with better everything under the skin. Time for another comparo then. Which is the best muscle car available today?
Emirates Driving Institute (EDI) in the UAE announced the launch of its “Platinum Driving Course” a few months ago, where well-heeled customers can learn how to drive on a fleet of premium cars instead of the usual Nissan Sunnys. And we got the chance to go back to school to try it out.
Perhaps it’s a legacy of Enzo himself, but Ferrari has never been one to err on the side of conservatism or modesty. Who else would roll out cars with names like ‘Speciale’, ‘LaFerrari’ and ‘Superfast’? Fortunately, the company has the cojones and know-how to back up the bluster, and whenever it unleashes a car with a superlative appellation, said vehicle never fails to deliver on its promise.
When we attended the Honda Meeting 2017 press conference in Japan, at the carmaker’s Tochigi R&D centre, we got an unexpected taste of some of the company’s latest products. The cars on hand to drive were the much-hyped Honda Civic Type-R, the new Honda Clarity range of hybrid/electric vehicles, and a Honda Civic Dynamic Study prototype. While our time with each of them was limited to a few minutes, if you ever get your hands on these on the same day, you’d have a completely different view of Honda as a carmaker than you would when walking into a local Honda showroom.
When Volkswagen first debuted the Passat CC, it turned quite a few heads. Not only because it looked good, but also the question of “why?”, especially as the CC version was priced higher than an already-existing Passat. Lucky for us at that time, Volkswagen decided to help us understand the “why” question and offered us the VW Passat CC V6 for 5 months. If you had been following our reports back in 2011, you would probably know we bloody fell in love with that car. Power, handling, comfort and luxury in a more stylish package — it ticked all the right boxes and justified the price premium over the standard Passat.
In terms of sheer volume, there is no bigger automotive segment than the one comprising compact SUVs. Jeep recognised this more than a decade ago and rolled out the Compass and Patriot to target the horde of (mainly) young buyers snapping up crossovers by the hundreds of thousands. It was a new foray for a brand that had until that point focused on larger, heavy-duty SUVs that embodied Jeep’s conquer-all-terrain roots.
The Kia Rio is the South Korean carmaker’s sub-compact hatchback offering. It’s not exactly the first car that comes to mind in this category, primarily dominated by the Japanese, but it has some presence in the UAE market (and rocking it in the KSA market) due its decent price-tag. However, the all-new Rio seems to have upped its game, and we recently had a go in it at a media drive event in the UAE.
It’s not very often a car museum wheels its finest exhibits out the door, transports them to a destination with fantastic driving roads, throws you the keys and says: “Here you go. Have fun!” It’s not a common occurrence even for us weather-beaten career motoring hacks. However, the Porsche Museum handed a small selection of automotive hacks from around the globe (including this DriveArabia scribe) what amounted to an early Eid present, laying on an epic road trip through the Scottish Highlands in some of the finest ‘toys’ in its collection.
When we went to Nevada for the U.S. launch of the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk (and visit SEMA) late last year, we had a bit of free time to explore Las Vegas, and we were provided a new Chrysler Pacifica minivan to do it in on our own accord. We figured why not take the chance to review it, since it’s likely destined to hit Middle East shores eventually, maybe within a year.