Dubai

The striking Peugeot 206 first debuted sometime back in 1999, if I remember correctly. The quick-handling hatchback looked good then and it still looks good today. Its replacement, the 207, was launched more than a year ago, but Peugeot decided to continue 206 production side-by-side since it continued to be popular. In a sign that the 206 is not going away anytime soon, Peugeot has done the unthinkable, facelifting an obsolete model. It is now called the Peugeot 206+, and it debuted at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show.

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It would seem the Lexus has launched their girly new SUV in Dubai, the 2010 RX350, and did not even tell us. While us being kept in the dark for various products is only getting worse, I heard elsewhere that they plan to target this one towards women, so any men out there who thought about buying an RX — you’ve been warned.

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The GCC market gets the 7-seater Mazda CX-9, but the rest of the world also gets a shorter and sportier 5-seater CX-7 model. And that CX-7 has already reached the point where it needed a facelift to stay fresh, so the 2010 model gets a smiley new face to go with a new engine choice.

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The 2009 Ford Fiesta has just hit the GCC market, and to celebrate, Ford dealers in Dubai are offering 24 special-edition models, with each one sporting a unique paint-job.

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Who would’ve known that Egyptian-built vehicles would one day roll around Dubai’s streets. Al Habtoor Motors recently launched the Temsa Safari SD luxury bus in Dubai. TEMSA is a Turkish company, while the Safari is from their Egyptian factory.

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The Porsche World Roadshow is a 10-day event that is held in various cities around the world, usually reserved for Porsche customers, and usually for a fee. The Dubai stopover was from February 4th to the 14th this year. Attending the event itself involves a single day of various activities held from 9 am to 4 pm, using the latest Porsche machinery at the Dubai Autodrome. One of these days was reserved for the media, and I was invited for the first time.

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I’ve driven three Focii in two years now, all hatchbacks, and its handling never fails to impress. This time, I got handed a Ford Focus Sport. While it did have upgrades compared to the ones I drove before, it sadly didn’t add any performance bits whatsoever.

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The 2009 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport was launched in Dubai at a quick media event where its off-road abilities were showcased. First shown at Moscow Auto Show last year, this new midsize model is really the replacement for the aging Nativa, and is based on the L200 pickup.

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Created solely for the United States market back when big SUVs were popular there, the American-built Toyota Sequoia received a redesign in 2008. Based on the American Toyota Tundra pickup truck, the brutishly big Sequoia makes the Land Cruiser look like a RAV-4, and intended to compete with the Chevy Suburban and the Nissan Armada. And then the U.S. economy went to hell, so Toyota decided to send those hard-to-sell trucks in the GCC instead, where things are a bit better. And therefore the 2009 Toyota Sequoia was launched yesterday in Dubai.

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The 2009 Volvo XC60 is a new crossover SUV that the Ford-owned Swedish company thinks will raise regional Volvo sells by an unrealistic 30%. The GCC version was launched in Dubai a few days ago, and Volvo gave the press a taste of the XC60’s capabilities at the Dubai Autodrome on January 28. They certainly had an impressive line-up of events planned.

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