2012 Bentley Mulsanne
| The Good: – Appears expensive – Cabin trimmed like a sofa – Very powerful engine |
The Bad: – As expensive as it appears – Drives like a sofa – Very thirsty engine |
| The Good: – Appears expensive – Cabin trimmed like a sofa – Very powerful engine |
The Bad: – As expensive as it appears – Drives like a sofa – Very thirsty engine |
The most expensive car we’d ever brought in for testing before was a Bentley Arnage. So it stands to reason that our previous record was just beaten by, what else, another Bentley. This time we drove the Mulsanne, a car that rings in at a cool Dhs 1.4 million. Try getting a bank loan for that.
Hyundai, one of the world’s fastest-growing automakers, has announced its best ever first-half year sales for the Middle East region. The company registered an increase of 13% in total sales compared to the first six months of 2011, selling 161,554 vehicles. But the sales numbers for each country are more interesting.
Kia Motors will introduce the next-generation Cerato compact sedan later this year in its home market of Korea under the name ‘K3’. Still to be known as the Cerato elsewhere, the original was Kia’s global best-seller in 2011.
The electric Nissan Leaf was the darling of the EV industry, slapping the Chevy Volt in the face with its lower price as it took the top spot in U.S. electric-vehicle sales. However, a major issue with heat is starting to emerge, and that makes any sort of debut in the Middle East unlikely.
We get lots of requests to do videos, but we generally don’t waste time churning out boring nonsense. If you haven’t heard already, we drove a McLaren MP4-12C recently. And we have video too. For footage that barely lasts a minute, you can see the launch control, the air-brake spoiler, the active suspension, the braking power and even the exhaust note, all shot during our road-test just outside Dubai. Video by Faisal Khatib.
If you keep track of good TV, you might have caught The Walking Dead series, a gritty realistic take on the zombie apocalypse theme. Few of you would realise though that the show is actually based on a comic book series. The 100th issue of the comics was just commemorated with this Hyundai Elantra Coupe Zombie Survival Machine.
When Kia launched their all-new flagship, a rear-wheel-drive fullsize sedan based on the Hyundai Genesis, they named it the Kia K9 for the Korean market, but held off on releasing its international name. Now they have, and it’s called the Kia Quoris.
It took a while. It took a long while. But we finally managed to get our hands on a supercar. A McLaren MP4-12C no less. Yes, we finally can remember the jumbled name of the car now.
A refreshed Japanese-market Suzuki Escudo has been introduced as a 2013 model, although it looks like a facelift that was done just for the sake of having a facelift.