With the entire global car market making a vigorous shift towards crossovers, sedans are turning more and more irrelevant by the day. Especially in the small-car segment, individual buyers are wooed by the high-riding hatchbacks on stilts. But sedans are not dying without a fight. Honda has launched the seventh generation of their sub-compact sedan, the City.
In the sub-compact luxury class, the Mercedes Benz CLA had been enjoying monopoly with its “four-door coupe” crammed into an unattractive small package. But now, the German giant’s arch-rival is here with an offering. The BMW 2-Series Gran Coupe is here to fill in the narrow gap (if there was one) between the 1-Series and the 3-Series sedan. And it looks like an economy car.
The revived Maybach brand is not new to SUVs. Their Mercedes-Maybach G650 Landaulet was a swan-song to the previous generation of the G-Wagen but was an offering for an extremely small niche. But this time around, the new Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 SUV is ready to properly lock horns with the top guns in the game, the Bentley Bentayga and the Rolls Royce Cullinan. Unfortunately, in a week which also saw the launch of the Aston Martin DBX and the Tesla Cybertruck, the gussied-up GLS-Class feels utterly forgettable already.
The Nissan Sentra has been an uneventful middle ground between the existing mundane Sunny and the larger Altima in Nissan’s lineup. The sedan has now been given a complete makeover for 2020. Has it helped in adding some character to the Sentra?
The “SUV” fever in the car industry has affected everything right from tiny hatchbacks all the way to huge luxury SUVs. Manufacturers are jumping on this bandwagon to grab a piece of this ever-growing higher-ground-clearance pie at the cost of killing “regular” car sales. With Bentley, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini and soon Ferrari joining the fray, Aston Martin has thrown its hat in the ring with the Aston Martin DBX, the British brand’s first SUV.
Using legendary monikers to sell new models is not a new strategy. A lot of manufacturers have been letting their new offerings ride this wave of nostalgia. But this can sometimes end up being quite controversial, depending on the model they slap their name onto. You saw it happening when Mitsubishi revived the Eclipse name on a crossover and when Chevy slapped the Blazer name on yet another crossover. And now, Ford has taken it to an all-new level by launching the Ford Mustang Mach-E, an electric crossover.
A surprise debut at the 2019 Dubai Motor Show was the 2020 Chevrolet Captiva. We didn’t quite realise what model it is until we saw the “Captiva” badge on the tailgate. It’s a decent-looking compact crossover, but it wasn’t until later that it’s really a rebadged MG Hector after a reader alerted us.
While the current generation of the Toyota Yaris soldiers into 2020 with little to no changes in the Middle East, a completely revamped version has been unveiled for more discerning markets.
The VW Golf is an iconic name with decades of legacy attached to it. The German conglomerate has finally lifted the covers off the new 2020 VW Golf, the eighth generation of the hatchback.
Volvo introduced the XC40 Recharge, the company’s first-ever fully electric car and the first model to appear in its new Recharge car line concept.