Feature Stories

Honda is better known as a maker of Civics and Accords nowadays, and anyone other than Honda salesmen will have a tough time trying to remember if they sell anything else. However, they do offer a midsize 4×4 called the Pilot, a model that had been chugging along virtually unchanged since the last recession. It wasn’t particularly good at anything either, so we were keen to see how Honda has gone about bringing the all-new 2016 Pilot bang up to date in our all-too-brief time with the car.

Read More …

The Nissan Patrol is probably the first proper car in the history of the world to be designed specifically for the Gulf, right from the design stage. How else would you explain its massive size, its V8-only engine choices, its ample space and its overkill of a/c vents all the way to the third-row seats. We’ve already reviewed the regular Nissan Patrol, so we’ll jump straight into what makes this latest version unique — the Nissan Patrol Desert Edition, brought to you by local rally legend Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

Read More …

Mazda has been on a roll lately, unveiling a series of desirable cars in various segments that make their rivals feel lacking. The latest segment they’re tackling is the sub-compact hatchback market, a niche that the previous-generation Mazda 2 was itself found lacking. But is the all-new model any better against the likes of the Toyota Yaris and the…uhhh…Toyota Yaris?

Read More …

Let’s face it — if you’ve ever shopped for a three-row 4×4 as a family vehicle in the UAE, the Ford Expedition was never on your radar. The most popular choices in the mainstream full-size segment have so far been the Chevrolet Tahoe and the Nissan Armada, both very capable V8-powered SUVs that are similarly-priced and well-received. But the Ford Expedition, which has actually been gaining ground in Saudi Arabia for a while now, has undergone a major transformation of sorts for 2015, mostly under the skin, so we pitched it against its closest rivals, a friend’s leased Tahoe and another friend’s family Armada,

Read More …

We’ve been hyped about this car from way back in 2012, when we heard it hit the American market. A turbo hot-hatch from Hyundai? That’s a recipe for some cheap fun! Here we were, expecting it to give the brilliant Ford Focus ST a run for its money. But then, the Hyundai Veloster Turbo actually came here, three years late to the party, and we drove it.

Read More …

The Lexus LX has somehow created a huge niche for itself around here, as the luxury truck of choice to stand out among a sea of Land Cruisers. Around since 2008 in its current form, this is the third facelift it’s received, and the first one that goes beyond just reshaped bumpers. We briefly drove the 2016 model at its UAE launch in Dubai.

Read More …

With all the controversy surrounding Volkswagen’s current woes with diesel cars, it is easy to forget that dirty diesel was never a viable environmentally-friendly alternative to petrol, ever. Diesel cars became a “thing” in certain parts of the world because they offered better mileage, which is all their buyers cared about, the environment be damned. But diesel cars have a variety of costly, heavy and inefficient add-ons to make them cleaner, just to meet tough emissions laws in Europe. If you want the cheapest form of energy for your car, there’s no better option than going electric. We tried out the all-electric VW e-Golf at Wolfsburg,

Read More …

The Cadillac CTS-V has been around for about a decade, but GM never quite figured out whether it was a compact or a midsize, and by their own chief engineer Tony Roma’s admission, couldn’t hack it as a rival to either the BMW M3 or the BMW M5, given its compromises to straddle the line. But things are much more focused this time around, with the latest CTS-V growing into a proper midsizer, leaving the compact super-sedan market to the ATS-V, which comes as a coupe too. We drove the company’s little new bruisers at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi this week.

Read More …

The Nissan Maxima made a name for itself in the 1980s and 1990s with a “Four-Door Sports Car” tagline that somehow worked back in the day, for a not-too-heavy V6-powered front-wheel-drive sedan. Of course, the game changed over the years as the Maxima stagnated for several years and then simply became a higher-trim version of the Altima, while shamelessly still coming with “4DSC” badges as standard. But the new one for 2016 already captured a lot of attention when it first popped up in photos several months ago. Is it finally more Maxima and less Maximbady?

Read More …