Mashfique Hussain Chowdhury

Exotic carmaker Aston Martin has posted a relatively huge loss, due to sliding sales figures for their sports cars and the failure of the Cygnet supermini.

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Let me start off by saying that I was missing in South Korea for the past one week, not for a test-drive event, but to be part of a new programme by Hyundai, dubbed the Hyundai Global Club Invitation. It’s an event that involved flying in around 35 people from 14 countries who contributed to the cause of promoting Hyundai, mostly by starting local Hyundai clubs and such, while a handful of “bloggers” were along for the ride. Somehow I was representing the UAE there, although I didn’t know that when I agreed to go for this trip. Between the long flights and 4 days of touring Hyundai’s facilities as well as South Korea itself,

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When shopping for a hot hatch in the UAE, the VW Golf GTI is on every potential buyer’s shopping list, usually as the only choice. But when shopping for a compact car here, the “regular” VW Golf is never on anyone’s shopping list. In fact, the GTI actually outsells the standard Golf here. The Golf is generally pricier than its rivals, but we’ll see if the extra cost is justified as much as it is in its GTI sibling.

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Our Jaguar XK has been running fine since we bought it in early summer. Which makes its minor non-mechanical issues rather annoying. The fact that we’ve covered only 800 km so far makes it doubly so.

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The UAE is not a minivan market. Most of the vans trundling around the streets of Dubai are of the commercial variety, ferrying workers to work and tourists to resorts. In the midst of this, Honda has dropped their own minivan — a proper one, built in America and designed for families. While a somewhat popular segment in the States with several players, here in the GCC, the Odyssey finds itself almost alone in the face of a crossover onslaught. Still, Honda is doing well enough with local sales that they’ve now launched the facelifted 2014 version here, and shipped one to us for a run.

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Hyundai’s Middle East office has officially launched the 2014 Hyundai Tucson crossover in the GCC, during the opening ceremony of its new Africa & Middle East Training Academy, the company’s first such dedicated training facility in Dubai. The more interesting tidbit to come out was that the Hyundai Veloster Turbo is finally headed to the UAE.

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Yep, we’ve reached our peak. There’s nothing left to aim for any more. Being among the first bunch of people to test-drive the Rolls-Royce Wraith at an international media launch event in Europe is about as high as you could go up the ladder when it comes to overseas trips. The icing on the cake was the event itself — the sportiest Rolls-Royce ever, driven in the Austrian countryside with no chaperones!

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As we’re sitting here, doing nearly 200 kph in a 2014 Bentley Flying Spur, sometimes it makes us wonder if a big car like this really needs the ability to do 200 kph. Or even 320 kph, which is the rated top speed of this redesigned limousine. How about the ability to do 0-100 kph in well under 5 seconds? In a car designed to carry royalty!

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