Ask and ye shall receive! After repeated requests from our readers, asking me to review the old Aurion, I finally caved in and asked Marwa, Toyota’s friendly PR lady, to arrange one for me, even though it is a year old now. She threw me this Sharjah-registered tester for two days, setting up the car for me within a week of my request.
Since we hung out at the Times Square Mall after testing the Altima Coupe, I guess it is now a good time to reveal that we’ve reached a deal with auto-accessories superstore, Yellow Hat, whereby they’ll supply or install various car accessories or products free-of-charge on our cars, so we can review them, as well as describe how the install went.
We have a familiar car over here, but only from the driver’s seat. The cabin is shared with the Altima sedan, with the exception of an actual handbrake replacing the sedan’s parking foot-brake and three front cup-holders, so Coupe buyers only have two cup-holders up front. Other differences include cramped rear legroom, a manual passenger seat for quick rear access, possibly less headroom, and very interesting exterior styling, even if a bit bloated-looking.
Since Bentley gave us our most expensive test car ever, at Dhs 1.3 million, I figured I’d write a bit more on it. Considering Aston Martin wanted proof of age, website demographics, blood group, etc, just to take out their Dhs 800,000 DB9 for 6 hours (which they never did give eventually), it was a leap of faith for Bentley to give us their Arnage R for four whole days on request, no questions asked. But all things considered, the 6.75-litre twin-turbo V8 is one hell of a motor.
This car is seriously crazy. Built like a limousine inside and out, the Bentley Arnage R drives like a muscle car from two decades ago. It is also the most expensive car we’ve ever tested.
I am rubbing my hands together right now with an evil grin. Enough said.
In our last few attempts to get advertising for this website, it was subtly hinted by some marketing reps that we are not very advertiser-friendly. This website certainly sucks more than Wheels when it comes to advertising priorities. Our site looks so bare without ads that I’ve decided to create my own ads, promoting various cars, all for free.
So there I was, people-watching from my apartment window as usual, seeing taxis speeding by tired brown people, spotting RTA guys hand out tickets, and counting the number of passing Land Cruisers (202.4 per hour at last calculation). And then I spotted this unique-looking five-door wagon. It had a sharp profile, with cool details such as lights on the hood and big red rear lights. The overall shape reminded me of a Nissan GT-R. And then it hit me — is this an early prototype of a secret GT-R sportwagon hot-weather-testing in Dubai?
Naming a car after a natural disaster is never a good idea. It gives people like me a chance to come up with cheesy titles for articles. But I did take our recent Chevy Avalanche Z71 tester up and down the Jebel Hafeet mountain road. Considering it was a family picnic, I did not try to beat any records that I might have set with the Bentley. But it gave me the opportunity to try out some smooth driving techniques with a vehicle that has more body roll than the sinking Titanic.
That’s correct, our latest tester is not that golden Hyundai My-Name-Is-Neo or whatever. It’s the giant Avalanche next to it. Frankly, naming a truck after a natural disaster isn’t the smartest of moves, but it fits in a way, I guess. People should run away from one of these as they do from a real avalanche. Because this thing is huge. It is one of the largest vehicles we’ve ever tested, possibly beaten only by the Infiniti QX56 we got last Eid.