Feature Stories

The only electric cars you’ll ever see in the GCC are at golf clubs, with little wheels and no doors. Sure, there are the unloved Lexus hybrids, there was that pricey Fisker Karma with the backup petrol engine, and some Chevy Volts were spotted testing in Dubai before disappearing for obvious reasons, but there are big things happening this week on the electric front. Dubai’s DEWA utility company has just announced the first dedicated charging station here for electric cars, in what is to become a network all over Dubai soon. And Renault is hoping to bank on that with the Zoe hatchback and the Twizy runabout.

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Mercedes-Benz make some very nice luxury cars. In fact, we really liked the new S-Class and the newer C-Class when we briefly drove them around town a few months ago. Mercedes-AMG make some very fast cars. In fact, they make those fast cars simply by upgrading their luxury cars with bigger engines and stiffer suspension. They go very fast in a straight line. But when you reach a corner, one of two things happen at the limit — if ESP is on, you are made to slow down and understeer forcefully, but if you turn off the ESP nannies,

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In a surprise move, the 2015 Lexus NX 200t has made its GCC debut, rather quickly after going on sale in Europe and America just recently. Hitting the ground running, the UAE dealer already has cars in the showroom, and put us in a few of them, although it was just a brief convoy-style drive in traffic.

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Harley-Davidson is on a roll. Not only did sales grow in 2014 compared to the year before, Harley-Davidson also released some all-new models to complement its already massive line-up of motorcycles. One of those models, and the most notable of them all, is the new Low Rider. After being shelved for half a decade, Harley-Davidson has resurrected the Low Rider name.

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Audi is generally known as a carmaker that doesn’t take risks. Their design language, their cabin layouts and even their base engines have simply been mildly tweaked versions from generation to generation. But sometimes, they pull a fast one out of the hat. There was the TT. Then there was the R8. And next came the RS 7. And now there are the station-wagon twins — the RS 4 Avant and the RS 6 Avant.

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I’ve never had to wear a coat that weighed as much as a goat before, but that’s exactly what we had to do as soon as we landed in Iceland. We were flown all the way there for the new 2015 Land Rover Discovery Sport media drive. Heading out in Land Rover-provided winter clothing, we trundled out of the airport to the waiting cars in the middle of the evening, just as a snow storm was setting in.

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With all the hype over the Dodge Charger Hellcat, people seem to have forgotten that there is an entire range of 2015 Charger sedans positioned below it. At the end of the day, the biggest sellers are going to be the Charger V6 and Charger R/T models, and while everyone was busy playing with the SRTs like little kids, we snuck out with the “regular” Chargers for a spin during our recent trip to the United States. Heck, we even drove the police “Pursuit” model as well.

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The Infiniti QX80 is the flagship of Nissan’s luxury arm. So it stands to reason that they’d use the Nissan Patrol as the basis for their full-size 4×4, just like Lexus and Cadillac have done so obviously with the LX570 and Escalade respectively, and not one peep of discontent can be heard out of their well-heeled buyers who’ve paid a premium for their glorified Land Cruisers and Tahoes. Infiniti had gone further than most by giving their big-boy 4×4 fairly unique sheetmetal when it debuted in mid-2010 in its current form. And for 2015, they’ve given it a facelift that attempts to stifle the heckling that the unique sheetmetal has taken over the years.

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Jaguar is one of the few brands that often sets up track days for potential as well as existing customers, to show a side of their cars that wouldn’t be apparent in a regular test-drive. Their latest event was held at the Yas Marina circuit a couple of months ago, and the media was invited to have a go at their range of cars as well.

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It was in 2009 that the Rolls-Royce Ghost joined the British uber-luxury carmaker’s line-up to finally give some company to the larger Phantom. If it were a lesser brand like BMW, they’d be preparing an all-new model already. But the “new” Ghost Series II has simply received a subtle update for 2015. We spent an entire morning trying to figure out exactly what those changes were, in a media drive around the UAE.

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