We’ve been hyped about this car from way back in 2012, when we heard it hit the American market. A turbo hot-hatch from Hyundai? That’s a recipe for some cheap fun! Here we were, expecting it to give the brilliant Ford Focus ST a run for its money. But then, the Hyundai Veloster Turbo actually came here, three years late to the party, and we drove it.
The Ford Expedition may still look largely the same for 2015, but there’s been a massive change under the bonnet, the V8 being replaced by a turbo V6.
The Lexus LX has somehow created a huge niche for itself around here, as the luxury truck of choice to stand out among a sea of Land Cruisers. Around since 2008 in its current form, this is the third facelift it’s received, and the first one that goes beyond just reshaped bumpers. We briefly drove the 2016 model at its UAE launch in Dubai.
BMW recently revealed the 2016 M2. It seems the German luxury brand has just pumped up the M235i with more power, while adding an active rear differential and lightened suspension components.
With all the controversy surrounding Volkswagen’s current woes with diesel cars, it is easy to forget that dirty diesel was never a viable environmentally-friendly alternative to petrol, ever. Diesel cars became a “thing” in certain parts of the world because they offered better mileage, which is all their buyers cared about, the environment be damned. But diesel cars have a variety of costly, heavy and inefficient add-ons to make them cleaner, just to meet tough emissions laws in Europe. If you want the cheapest form of energy for your car, there’s no better option than going electric. We tried out the all-electric VW e-Golf at Wolfsburg,
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.
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.
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.