News

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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I was pissed when my PR dodo told me he arranged a test-drive during my self-imposed break from road tests. It didn’t help matters when he said the only car he managed to get was a Ford Focus. I went and picked it up today, with a minor confusion as Ford and Jaguar/Land Rover are separating their offices, for obvious reasons. On top of that, the tester turned out to be the 1.6-litre version, instead of the larger-engined one. However, it is in Ghia trim, with upgraded 16-inch wheels and 205/55 tyres. After taking it away and pulling it through some corners,

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It seems AGMC, Dubai’s exclusive BMW dealer, recently held the first BMW M Power Driver Training session at the Dubai Autodrome. More than 30 AGMC customers attended the road safety awareness driver-training course with their own cars, new or old. Wait a minute…I own a BMW M Roadster, and I wasn’t invited. But then it hit me…I bought my car second-hand, and I’ve never stepped into an AGMC service bay, in the interests of avoiding the rumoured Dhs 1000 oil changes. I may have plastered my BMW all over this website, but AGMC has no record of me owning it.

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The new top-rung version of America’s favourite sports car, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, has managed to a pull off a time of 7:26 minutes at Germany’s famed Nurburgring racetrack, driven by a GM development engineer. The ZR1 thereby beats the amazing 7:29 set by the “basic” Nissan GT-R recently (after setting 7:38 on a wet track earlier). However, the ZR1 has a tough battle ahead, as the prototype lightweight Nissan GT-R V-Spec has already been casually timed doing 7:25, while the pricey Lexus LF-A prototype has already pulled off a 7:24. Honda is already testing an NSX prototype,

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Since one of our readers, Ali Z.Tabrizi, brought up the Cadillac BRX in a message to me, I figured I’ll use this vehicle to introduce the new incarnation of the Future Car Preview section, now rolled into this blog itself. As for the pictured Caddy, it is the Provoq concept, which was supposed to become a new crossover called the Cadillac BRX. The word now is that this will simply replace the slow-selling CTS-based SRX, thereby becoming the 2010 Cadillac SRX.

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After 3 months of development, 2 months of painstaking research and data-entry, and a month designing and cleaning up the look, my ultra-exclusive, never-before-seen-in-the-region Ultimate Car Buyer Guide is finally ready to hit the public airwaves! I’ll be cleaning up the look some more over the rest of this week, but basically, every car now gets its own page, which means it becomes possible to add more info for each car in the future if time permits. Also, it is much quicker to update, and older models do not disappear any more. Be sure to check out the surprising reliability data for some of the cars,

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While we were not sure whether the new-generation Nissan X-Trail would even make it here, one of our readers, Don, spotted a 2009 model on a flatbed towtruck on the Sheikh Zayed Road.

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Honda’s advanced hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle came off the assembly line at the world’s first dedicated fuel cell vehicle manufacturing facility in Japan. After 19 years of development, the arrival of this “real world” fuel cell car is a step forward towards cleaner motoring. While expensive, the car will be available only on lease in the United States and Japan, in limited numbers.

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It is a bit obvious that updates to this website have been sparse over the last couple of weeks. Truth is I’ve been working on new additions to the website. The updates below will be the last for the current New Car Buyer Guide. Because I have been working on a new version of the guide since March. To be called the Ultimate Car Buyer Guide, it will include some interesting new information. Also coming are a car comparison feature to see various specs side-by-side for a couple of cars, but it is very simple, so don’t hold your breath.

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The biggest vehicle I’ve spun the wheels on is a van. Some have done it with a bus. Watch where you cross the road.

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