The Nissan Juke is the answer to a question nobody asked. Part-hatchback, part-crossover and all-controversial, Nissan has gone ahead and asked itself another question: “What do you get when you cross a Nissan Juke with a Nissan GT-R?”
It was a busy week in the UAE automotive sector, with the launch of a new Peugeot showroom in Abu Dhabi, a Juke Missions campaign by Nissan, the announcement of fake parts raid by Toyota, the start of a new Maserati one-make race season, and a booster-seat giveaway by BMW.
Honda chose to debut the near-production 2012 Honda CR-V concept at the 2011 Orange County International Auto Show in the United States.
You might be wondering why there have been no updates on our 2000 BMW M Roadster, the ultra-rare sports car of which only a handful exist in the UAE. The truth is we haven’t been driving it much, because it is a race-car for the streets. Race-cars aren’t particularly good on crowded streets.
There was a recent announcement from the UAE Ministry of Interior regarding installing children’s car seats, which supposedly makes it mandatory that children should use baby-seats in a car. While the details of that are still a bit vague, it will likely become an offence to carry kids on your lap for use as human airbags. Babies “R” Us, a division of, Toys “R” Us, sent us some guidelines for parents to help them find the right car seat for their child.
We were offered a second round with the 2012 Ford Explorer to address some issues we had discovered with our previous abused grey-coloured test vehicle. So while we’ve already amended our original review to reflect that, we were now still left with a brand-new blue-coloured Explorer Limited for two days. So we did what we always do with extra time — conduct one of our legendary Economy Tests.
Photos are leaking out of Hyundai’s factory in Korea from unknown sources, showing the controversial new front-end of the 2012 Hyundai Genesis Coupe.
Porsche Centre Dubai, a part of Al Nabooda Automobiles in the UAE, delivered 211 new cars in the month of August, apparently the best monthly performance ever for any Porsche Centre dealership worldwide. But that’s not the interesting part.
| The Good: – Huge cabin space – Decent handling – Very comfortable ride |
The Bad: – Average fuel economy – No low-range gearing – Some hard cabin plastics |
Continuing our series on Volkswagen (hey, they’re offering us car after car, so why not), this week we have the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg, a 4×4 that shares its platform with the pricier Porsche Cayenne. Considering we drove a Porsche Cayenne V6 just a few weeks ago, it felt a whole lot similar, yet different.