Dubai

The 4th DriveArabia Meet was held on October 1st at the Dubai Outlet Mall. The “chief guest” of our small gathering was the 2012 Volkswagen Golf GTI. It was great again, as some of our regulars showed up, as well as some new faces. We had some fun doing repeated runs with the VW’s awesome automatic parallel-parking system, checking out how tight of a spot it could fit into. Some of the attendees shown up later in the night, during the free DriveArabia-sponsored dinner, so they are unfortunately not in these pictures.

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This Friday, BMW Middle East held the Mini “Drive Out Loud” festival at the Dubai Autodrome. The event hosted Mini owners from around the Middle East. Entry was open to the public, though ticket prices were pegged at Dhs 100.

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Driving while sitting two inches away from a raspy high-revving engine is rather uncommon for most people. It’d mean you’re either driving a Ferrari 458 or a Toyota Hiace. But somewhere in between is the Porsche Cayman, supposedly the most balanced sports car in the world. We can now confirm that, after our stint with the Cayman R.

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Competition in the sub-compact segment is heating up, with entries such as the Hyundai Accent, the Honda Jazz and the Ford Fiesta pushing the boundaries of what is possible with small cars. And soon after we drove the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic for the first time, we were invited to the UAE launch of the all-new 2012 Toyota Yaris. Thus far, the Yaris has remained the segment leader, but we were eager to find out if it could maintain that lead.

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It isn’t every day that we get to drive a Rolls-Royce. It isn’t every day that we get to drive an electric car either. But there we were, driving the Rolls-Royce Phantom 102EX, the British carmaker’s experiment with electric cars.

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Let’s get it out of the way that, as much as Chevrolet would love to target a car like the Aveo at someone like me, I chose long ago to never own anything in this category of cars. And yet, I found myself at the GCC launch event for the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic anyway, lured in by the promise of a free overnight stay at the Atlantis hotel in Dubai.

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Riding the green wave, Volkswagen Middle East participated in the second stop on the Western leg of the Asia Pacific Natural Gas Vehicle Associates (ANGVA) Green Highways 2011 event held in Dubai recently that is dedicated to raising awareness among local industries of the importance of making natural gas and energy efficient cars available.

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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.

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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.

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Trying hard to redefine Detroit Muscle, Roush performance has announced an exclusive and unique serial numbered 2012 Roush Stage 3 Mustang Hyper-Series. Only 25 will be made.

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