Feature Stories

Volkswagen recently held a mega event for media, dealer staff and fleet customers last week at the Yas Marina circuit to celebrate their best ever sales period in the Middle East, witnessing 22% growth for 2012 over last year. The event consisted of an overnight stay at the Yas Viceroy hotel with various activities the next morning, such as track time with the VW Scirocco, drag time with the VW Passat CC, and skid-pad time with the VW Golf GTI. Now, the problem with attending a mega event means that there is a lot of standing around doing nothing,

Read More …

While we here in Dubai just witnessed the launch of the first road-legal electric car, the Fisker Karma for Dhs 500,000, and General Motors is still testing their Chevrolet Volt here for ages, poor countries like Bangladesh took the green initiative years ago. What you see here is the main mode of “baby” taxi transportation in my ancestral hometown of Barisal in Bangladesh. It’s built locally. And it’s fully electric.

Read More …

As I’m flying over Dubai and Sharjah towards Ras Al Khaimah in a Bell 412 crammed in with 13 other people, I am thinking that helicopter travel isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The flight is noisy, tight and industrial, completely at odds with the “luxury” experience we were supposed to be having. But damn is it quick. We reached our destination in only 20 minutes, landing at the Banyan Tree resort at the northern tip of the Emirates, having enjoyed a great view and not feeling fatigued at all for the 2013 Lexus LS launch event.

Read More …

We held our sixth quick meet back before the start of summer. Direct invites went out to our meet regulars while a last-minute announcement about the meet was made in the MyRide forums, so that we could keep it a small affair where everybody gets to talk to everybody. It was again a great afternoon, as our Honda S2000 made its first public appearance, and we brought along a Lexus IS 300C and a Lexus GS 350 so our attendees could take a closer look at them, and even take them for a spin.

Read More …

In a move that no one expected, the Fisker Karma just became the first plug-in electric car to officially go on sale in the Middle East. Mitsubishi briefly thought about making an entry here with the i-MiEV, while Chevrolet has a couple of Volts running around Dubai since last year for so-called tests that never seem to end. But the upstart brand Fisker managed to come to market first, with a launch event held in the UAE.

Read More …

This one was a long time coming. Sure, everybody else is busy comparing the Toyota 86 to everything from the VW Scirocco to the Hyundai Genesis Coupe. But aside from the Mazda MX-5, there was only one other car that’s similar to the 86 in recent history, and it’s the Honda S2000. It ceased production only 3 years ago, so it is still possible to buy one on the used market. And whadaya know, we actually own one in our fleet. And our car also happens to be one of the lowest-mileage S2000s in the world. This was going to be interesting.

Read More …

The most anticipated cars in this region are always the cars that are near the top of the sales charts, and the Nissan Altima happens to be one of those. As the second-best-selling midsize sedan in the Gulf, the 2013 Nissan Altima is going to be all over the streets of Dubai by the end of this year, and with good reason. The new car has improved in all the right ways.

Read More …

When we were driving the top-spec automatic version of the Toyota 86 recently, one of our contributors happened to be testing the base manual version at the same time. So I and George here were in the unique position to check out the differences between the two cars, considering there is a sizeable difference in price between the two.

Read More …

When we got the call to come drive the “new” Rolls-Royce Phantom models in Dubai, I had to think hard to remember why they were calling them new models. Then it hit me that Rolls-Royce did launch “new” models of their Phantoms, if only with minor changes. The Phantom Series II may just be a facelift, but the new tech added brings the flagship up to modern standards.

Read More …