With all the hoopla over higher petrol prices, there’s a lot of talk about hybrid cars in general. We’ve never had any interest in the Porsche Panamera before, for obvious reasons, but when the Dubai dealership offered us a plug-in hybrid version of the same car, we were all for trying it out, especially since we had the car for the better part of a week to put it through various scenarios.
It’s been a busy month in the UAE as the Abu Dhabi Infiniti dealer opened a new showroom, the F1 in Schools programme had their finals, and the Dubai dealer for Nissan held a public launch for the new Maxima.
Ferrari has unveiled a new limited-edition variant of the F12 Berlinetta. The Ferrari F12 TdF gets an upgraded engine and a fair bit of redone bodywork.
Michelin Arabia invited us for a trip to Malaysia a couple of months ago, for the 2015 edition of the Michelin Pilot Sport Experience, to drive all sorts of race-cars at the F1 circuit in Sepang. That’s great as a media trip, but then they also gave us two extra invites so that we could run a contest and pick 2 of our readers to go along with us. Let’s just say that our winners, Sreeprasad Jayaprasad from the UAE and Usama Raheel Khan from Saudi Arabia, had the time of their lives.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently unveiled his company’s long-awaited all-electric Model X crossover SUV. first announced in 2012, the expensive new model isn’t particularly attractive, but it is packed with revolutionary features for a production car.
BMW has just revealed the new M4 GTS, a model that they call the “most agile, radical and powerful M4 ever,” which is amusing because the M4 nameplate has only been around for less than 2 years now. Maybe they meant the M3 as well.
Nissan’s well-known performance brand, Nismo, made its Middle East debut at a launch event in Dubai. It is the first time that an entire line of Nismo models are offered in the UAE and other GCC countries.
Al Habtoor Motors, the official dealer of Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC) in the UAE, has expanded its regional presence as the Al Habtoor Group’s automotive division has been awarded the franchise of Mitsubishi Fuso in Saudi Arabia.
You must’ve heard of Jebel Jais by now. Located in the outskirts of Ras Al Khaimah, it’s the tallest mountain in the United Arab Emirates, at about 1,910 metres. Saudi Arabia has an even taller mountain called the Jabal Sawda, at nearly 3,000 metres, but Jebel Jais has become a tourist spot for a reason — it has a perfectly-paved road leading up to the top. Wide, twisty and clear on a weekday morning, we decided to drive up and down that road in two identical cars. Well, identical in all but one aspect.
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.