One man died and 61 people were injured when a multiple-car pile-up happened on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway on the 2nd of April. The huge crash involved 127 cars on the road heading into Dubai, early in the morning.
Since that final badge was missing from the Panamera line, Porsche has gone ahead and turned up the boost on the Turbo to create the Panamera Turbo S flagship model.
We attended a press conference today at Yas Marina Rotana that marked the launch of the 2011 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, the local desert rally event that attracts various international and local teams in a race across the inner sand dunes of the Emirates in cars, trucks and motorcycles. Highlights included overtaking a rally-modified Mini Countryman driving on the street, watching footage of previous races, and a hilarious episode where Mohammed Ben Sulayem jokingly got annoyed at being referred to as “MBS”.
If you are a follower of automotive time-wasters, you would’ve noticed the photos of the prototype BMW M3 pickup, of all things, caught testing at the Nurburgring and around Germany.
Abu Dhabi Motors, the dealer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, has just opened the world’s largest Rolls-Royce showroom in the Umm Al Nar area of Abu Dhabi. It could be seen as a celebration of them being the biggest-selling Roll-sRoyce dealer in the Middle East and one of the top five dealers in the world, managing to sell more than a hundred cars last year for the first time.
So Car Middle East got the BMW M3, the BMW 7-Series and the BMW Z4 as long-term cars. And Wheels got the BMW X5 M. We got the BMW 535i Gran Turismo. While the hierarchy of publications is obvious here, we don’t mind. In our experience, every modern BMW drives like a sports car. Every BMW.
With a choice of three V8 engines, two of them supercharged, Jaguar apparently were not finding enough buyers for their all-new XJ flagship sedan in “developing” regions such as Russia, China and the Middle East. So as per “demand”, they’ve released a new base model with a 3.0-litre V6 just for these markets.
We’ve been using the 2011 Infiniti QX56 long-termer as our daily driver for the past two months. But if you’re wondering whatever happened to our 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee, it’s still around. Late last summer, we took a trip down to Sharjah and bought parts worth Dhs 1300 or so to make it look new again.
After recently introducing the first “manufacturer-approved Japanese brand certified pre-owned program” for Nissan in the UAE, Arabian Automobiles has opened the UAE’s largest used cars facility in a media event held yesterday. The company is the sole dealer for Nissan, Infiniti, Renault, ZNA and MG in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, and they have chosen to get into the used car business in a big way with this 7000 square-metre facility.
If you’re wondering why we haven’t posted an update on our borrowed 2011 Infiniti QX56 for a while, it’s because it had gone back via tow-truck to Nissan on a working vacation a week ago, namely for test-drives by other magazines. It is due to be back with us today hopefully.