Our Jaguar XK never had a fair shot in this market. While the car is perceived to be a modern classic in the United States and Europe, it had a weird reputation here — a mix between expensively unreliable, driven only by old British men, and expensive enough to get a ton of road respect.
We drove the updated 2020 Nissan Patrol around the UAE and found out what has changed, and whether the positive traits of the old one has been retained.
Fiat-Chrysler has a notorious reputation when it comes to reliability and build quality. But right off the bat, we’ll be the first ones to say that we highly recommend the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger twins, and everyone who bought one after reading our reviews are very content. We’ve had our Chrysler 300 SRT for almost 3 years now. The car has been mechanically and electrically reliable for the most part, except for one nagging issue that no amount of warranty work is solving — the same small bits of interior trim keep falling off, again and again, twice every summer.
The last generation of the Jaguar had a massive factory problem. One of several electronic control modules on the HID headlights used to keep shorting out in some way or the other every time there was some sort of power surge, such as when your battery dies or sometimes even randomly, maybe once every two years. This used to cause the auto-levelling function to go stupid, making the headlights point permanently downwards even though they are perfectly working fine otherwise (while flashing a warning light in your gauge cluster permanently as well). Oddly enough, the warning light was for the turning-headlights feature,
A complete mental recalibration is called for. This is just the first three-quarter-throttle squirt out of the pitlane and onto the front straight of the Dubai Autodrome, yet it’s already evident the forward thrust being served up here is on the gob-smacking end of the scale. It feels as though I’ve been implanted in a movie that’s playing in fast forward, and the grey matter is still trying to comprehend this madness.
It’s not often that the launch of a new car is held in the basement. But there we were, in the underground parking lot of the Ford Middle East HQ, getting an exclusive walk-around of the all-new 2020 Explorer. Only two US-spec pre-production cars are in the country at the moment, in Hybrid trim, and we were among the first journos to get a look at them.
A surprise debut at the 2019 Dubai Motor Show was the 2020 Chevrolet Captiva. We didn’t quite realise what model it is until we saw the “Captiva” badge on the tailgate. It’s a decent-looking compact crossover, but it wasn’t until later that it’s really a rebadged MG Hector after a reader alerted us.
Yesterday, November 12, 2019, saw the opening of the region’s premier motor show – the 15th Dubai International Motor Show – at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
Launched in the UAE, we took the all-new 2020 Toyota Supra for a spin around Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, and found it to be a car in need of a niche.
If you’re wondering why we don’t talk about our 2013 Toyota FJ Cruiser any more, it’s because we sold it last year to a reader. And what a great car it was. Let’s take a final look at the running costs.