Category: Automotive

Until Uber comes to Kuwait we have to make due with alternatives and as of recently the only alternative we had available was Easy Taxi. I’ve used them a few times and I have mixed feelings about them. For one thing every time I book a car the driver calls me up and asks me where I am even though he has my GPS location on his map. The other annoying thing is the fact that they try to negotiate a price before they even pick me up which I hate doing. My last issue is the fact that I have to pay cash instead of having the ride charged to my credit card similar to how I do with Uber. This is where Careem comes in.

Careem is an alternative to Easy Taxi that has recently come into the market. I haven’t had the chance to use them just yet but first impressions from their app and website is that they might be a worthy alternative. Why?

– You can add a credit card to your account and use it to pay for your rides
– The rides are metered
– You can pre-book a cab in advance

The only negative I can see at the moment is that their rides will cost you more. The minimum cost for their “Economy Car” is KD3 while their “Business Car” is KD4. If you’re interested in trying them out you can download their app or visit their website [Here]

After spending a weekend with the Mercedes S-Class I was telling a friend about my experience and how it made me want to listen to hip hip the whole time. Before realizing it we were discussing other cars that suited hip hop when the Escalade came up. My friend asked me why I don’t review the new Escalade as well so right away I got in touch with Cadillac. The next day picked up the Escalade for the weekend.

The car is HUGE! I was expecting it to be big obviously since I’ve driven the older Escalade before but it had been a long time since I had been any car that was this big. The model I picked up looked very pimp with a black exterior and a brown leather interior. First thing I did after adjusting the seating position was to connect my iPhone and start blasting hip hop. While looking for a USB port to plugin my phone I actually ended up finding five, so you could basically charge the whole families phones while driving. The car I drove could fit six adults very comfortably since it had two pilot seats in the second row instead of the usual bench seat.

Because I had the Cadillac for the weekend I decided to pick up a few friends and head into the desert for a fun outing. It was a Saturday and Qout Market was on so we decided to all meet up there first. Once we were done with the market all five of us got into the Escalade and took off towards the desert. The Escalade performs at its best when the car is packed with friends or kids. Since the car comfortably fits six and we were just five everyone was pretty relaxed on the long drive. One cool feature I enjoyed in the car on the long drive is the heads up display. Instead of having to look down at the speedometer all the time to see how fast I was going I could instead have my speed displayed on the windshield in front of me. But sadly that still wasn’t enough to stop me from getting a speeding ticket. The car is enormous so you expect it to drive like a tank but it doesn’t and I ended up getting caught doing 145 in a 120 zone. Once we got to desert, I shifted the car into four wheel drive and drove off road looking for camels.

For a car this huge though you’d expect a lot of room in the trunk but thats sadly lacking when the third row seats are up. It’s one of the few negatives I have about the car. With both rear seats down you get a ton of luggage space but the car then can only hold four passengers. On the positive side you could lower half the third row seats creating more luggage space while still leaving room for a fifth passenger. The second thing I disliked about the car is the touch interface. Cadillacs don’t use standard push buttons to control things like climate control or the volume but instead use a combination of touch buttons with physical feedback. It’s hard to explain but it’s basically a flat surface which you touch and the surface vibrates a little bit to let you know the button has been pressed. I found this interface very frustrating to use especially the volume control. You can’t increase or decrease the volume easily, if the music is too loud I need to tap the volume button over an over to get it to decrease but you can’t do it too quickly or else it won’t register your touch. I also thought the main interface screen was awkwardly positioned facing upwards towards the ceiling instead of pointing eye level or at least towards me the driver. Finally the media system interface looks like something from 2008. I didn’t think it matched the luxury feel of the Escalade and I’m surprised the background color of the interface was a vibrant blue which not only doesn’t match the fancy interior of the Escalade but doesn’t even blend with the digital speedometer display which has a black background.

I had a blast with the Escalade over the weekend. It’s such a ginormous car but it isn’t difficult to drive at all. Cadillac have really tried their best to make this car accessible to everyone especially mums. The gas and brake pedals are adjustable so if you’re short you can move them up closer to you, the seat obviously is very adjustable but other features like lane change warnings and surround vision all try to make this huge car feel unintimidating. Also for people who like to whatsapp and snapchat while driving, the lane change warning is something you’re going to appreciate. While driving if the car starts drifting towards the other lanes, the car warns you by vibrating your chair. That way you can look back up at the road and adjust your driving.

The Escalade starts at KD27,000 for the premium model which is the one I tested in this review. If you’d also like to test drive any of the Alghanim Automotive cars click [Here]

According to @tafteesh_q8, a new speed camera was spotted in Ahmadi that looks like a garbage bin. If these start popping up everywhere then I might consider investing in a decent radar detector since I get way more speeding tickets then I should be anyway.

Thanks @Ahmad_Al_Awadhi

Update: Based on the comments it seems the photo above is not in Kuwait.

Is this feature new? My brother noticed it a couple of weeks back and my friend told me about it yesterday.

Around a couple of weeks back I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast where he had my favorite car journalist Chris Harris on. They were both talking about cars and Chris Harris started talking about how comfortable the new S-Class was and how much he loved it. The past few cars I’ve reviewed have all been pretty much sport cars like the Jaguar F-Type Coupe and the Ferrari 458 Spider. So I figured you know what? I wanted to try something different. So I whatsapped my contact at Mercedes and asked him if the S-Class was available to take over the weekend and it was.

I have a bit of history with the S-Class since over the years my dad has owned the previous four generations and I’m old enough to have driven three of them. My favorite of the three and the one I have the most amount of passion towards was the shaba7 (“ghost” model year 91-98). I remember when the car first came out me and my best friend spotted one in Salmiya while we were walking towards Kids ‘R’ Us (this was probably around 1992). We started discussing how the car came standard with bullet proof windows and how it was so quiet once you sat inside that Mercedes installed a little red light that would notify you if a car around you beeped because you wouldn’t hear it otherwise. Of course all this wasn’t true but the shaba7 was so different from anything else at that time it created all these rumors. Then when I finally became old enough to drive the car I just felt so on top of the world when I was in it. I used to beg my dad to let me take the car out when I had a date because it was so much more impressive than pulling up in the other family car, a 1993 hunter green Dodge Minivan. The S-Class has changed considerably over the years but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the respect you get when you’re in one.

When I first sat in the new S-Class I was taken aback by how beautiful the interior was. I’ve been in quite a few cars now that have replaced the analogue dashboard dials with digital screens but none have managed to make it look as good as they do in the S-Class. The center console screen is also the largest screen I’ve ever seen in a car, its around six iPhone 6’s wide just to give you an idea about how huge it is. All these screen with cheap looking graphics would have been a disaster but Mercedes have put together a very tasteful and premium looking user interface with fancy graphics and lots of animations. At night you can also choose if you want interior mood lighting and the color of the light. I chose pink just because it made the interior look like a fancy strip club but the car interior looked great in all the colors and surprisingly not that tacky. The S-Class was very comfortable to sit in and the seats had the softest head rest in any car I’ve ever sat in. It’s literally pillow like and in fact it might have originally started off as a pillow and then shaped into a head rest. No matter who sat in the car the first thing they would notice were the fluffy soft headrests. As a whole the car was extremely comfortable, so comfortable in fact I drove it all the way to the Boubyan Island bridge and back without feeling any sort of fatigue or exhaustion. It’s fast, smooth and super comfy. I also think the new S-Class is the best looking S-Class since the shaba7. I love the exterior lines and especially the rear of the car which I’ve disliked in the last two generations of S-Class.

For some reason this car just made me want to blast hiphop the whole time and I don’t even listen to hiphop. It’s such a pimp ass car I loved it. I drove up to a gate outside these water towers that were being painted and when I parked the car I noticed the caretaker of the place started unlocking the gate to let me in. The car screams I am important especially now with not so many of them around. I honestly really can’t think of anything negative to say about the car. If I wanted to nitpick I could say I found the screen animations a bit slow and I hated how I actually had to go into the menu to turn the AC off instead of using a physical button. I could also complain about the sound system which I didn’t think was that great but really this would be me just nitpicking because there wasn’t anything I really disliked about the car. The new S-Class starts at KD33,000 but the model I drove was a bit spec’d out and sells for around KD35,000.

For more information on the S-Class, check out this [Link]

The Kuwait Concours d’ Elegance will be taking place next week starting from February 11th and last till February 18th. The Concours d’ Elegance first came to Kuwait back in 2010.

What is the Concours d’Elegance?
Concours is a French word meaning competition. The concept of Concours originates in 17th C. France when aristocrats used to choose their best horse carriages to parade around parks of Paris during the summer week ends and holidays. Later these traditions changed to automobiles from the 20th C. Concours today have strict regulations and cars are inspected by qualified judges. Trophy winners are carefully chosen.

A reader sent me the full schedule of events that are taking place that week, if you’re interested in checking it out click [Here]

Last weekend I went to Bahrain to attend the GulfRun X event that was taking place there at the Bahrain International Circuit. GulfRun is a yearly event where guys in Kuwait take their cars to Bahrain to race on a race circuit over a two day period. The last GulfRun I attended was GulfRun 6 but since this was their 10th year anniversary there was no way I was going to miss it. I spent most of the day socializing at the tracking and the evenings enjoying the dining experience Bahrain has to offer. My good friend at 8IGHTYONE Productions just released a video of the event and I just love it. Check it out above. [YouTube]

Five people were killed and more than 50 others injured in a horrific crash in Kuwait yesterday, involving a bus carrying Bahraini pilgrims.

…

Thick fog blanketing most of the region was blamed for the incident which happened when the bus, carrying pilgrims from Bahrain to Karbala in Iraq, was apparently overtaken by a water tanker, leading it to crash into a truck carrying bricks. [Source]

A horrific accident that took place the other day here in Kuwait during the thick fog. [YouTube]

Update: Video has been removed by the uploader

Yesterday was the first day of Auto Moto 15 thats taking place at 360 Mall. I passed by awhile ago and although the selection of cars wasn’t that great, I did leave satisfied. For one thing they have the Alfa Romeo 4C on display, I hadn’t seen that car live before and damn it looks ridiculously cool in person. They also had the Volkswagen XL1 which I posted about last month on display plus the Porsche 918 Spyder.

For Toyota fans, there was a TRD display but all the cars on display just looked really really tacky. If that wasn’t bad enough, turns out all the cars only had TRD cosmetic kits with no engine performances available.

If you’re a car fan it’s worth passing by. For more information click [Here]

A friend sent me the video above of a Volkswagen XL1 at the local dealers garage. The XL1 is a hybrid car that costs around KD40,000 and is limited to only 250 units worldwide.

Definitely an eye turner since it looks like a car from the future. [YouTube]

Thanks Manae

I love this car, I’ve loved it ever since I first laid my eyes on it. Last year I took the F-Type roadster out for a day and my biggest issue with it other than the super tiny trunk was the fact it was a soft top convertible. I’m not a fan of soft tops so when Jaguar revealed the F-Type Coupe I knew this is the car I wanted to get.

The Jaguar F-Type Coupe is one of the best looking cars on the roads right now and in my opinion, it also has one of the hottest looking rear ends. The model Jaguar lent me was the V6 340hp although they had a 380hp version available to test drive as well (maybe I could take that for a spin next time Jaguar?). When I first picked up the car I wasn’t too sure about the color, but by the end of the day it had grown on me. It’s such a beautiful car that even the white looks great on it, actually white might be my favorite color on the Coupe.

The F-Type Coupe isn’t a big car, it doesn’t have any rear seats nor any kind of room behind the seats. It’s compact but never feels claustrophobic. I picked up the car in the morning and went about my day. I had a bunch of errands to run followed by lunch with a friend and like the F-Type roadster, this is a great everyday car. It’s easy to drive in traffic and the suspension is soft enough to handle bumpy old roads. The trunk in the Coupe is fairly large as well so if you want to drop a friend off at the airport you can, that was something I wasn’t able to do with the roadster due to the fact that trunk couldn’t fit a medium sized bag.

After lunch I drove up north to my favorite isolated road to take my photos. It’s a 50 minute drive each way so it gives me a lot of good quality time with the car. One thing this model I drove missed over the previous roadster I had taken out was the optional sport exhaust system. Although the car had an aggressive growl and popped a lot, I did miss having the optional exhaust switch which would kick the sound up a notch. Speaking of sounds, the sound system in the review car was also the standard 6-speaker one and not the 12-speaker Meridian system I had previously tried out in the roadster. It still sounded impressive, but just not as good as the Meridian.

One thing I really appreciated on the car this time around were the brakes. Based on the spec sheet I received, the Coupe I drove was fitted with the standard brakes but they were extremely responsive and very powerful. I’m by nature a late-braker but with the F-Type I became a very-late-braker because I had so much confidence in the brakes. Makes me wonder how much better the optional super performance braking system would be.

Like the F-Type roadster, one of the best things about the Coupe is the starting price. The Jaguar F-Type Coupe starts at just KD19,500 and the one I was driving with all the options sells for around KD24,000. If I didn’t know how much the F-Types cost I would have easily guessed over KD30,000 just by the looks alone. Is there anything I didn’t like in the car? Not really, I mean this is the car I was actually considering getting a few months ago when I was car shopping. It’s got great looks, incredible performance and just feels fantastic on the road.

If you’re interested in test driving the car yourself you can pass by the Jaguar dealer in Al-Rai (Al-Zayani) and check it out there.

In a move to reduce congestion, the Ministry of Interior started allowing cars to drive on the emergency lane during certain hours and on certain roads. Now according to the video above (it’s in Arabic), it seems majority of those emergency lanes will now be paved and converted into permanent driving lanes. I’d love to crack a joke about how that’s easier than ticketing people who were using the emergency lanes all day long but thing is this actually makes sense. Our highways will now be a lane wider which will reduce traffic. [YouTube]

via AboFlan

A video posted by Sulaiman 427 AlQassar (@slaimano) on Dec 12, 2014 at 1:36am PST

This past weekend the Kuwait Mile event was held where around 500 cars signed up to race down a mile long strip of the highway. The event was a success with lots of interest but sadly there were two accidents (which I am aware of) that took place that day. Accidents at a racing event are absolutely normal but what I was surprised with was the lack of safety barriers between the track and the crowd.

In the video on top of one of the accidents, the car loses control and luckily crashes into the barrier on the left. If the car had headed to the right instead then there might have been some serious injuries since there was only a metal fence separating the viewers from the track (check the screen grab above).

A video posted by خالد الزعابي ابو الجود (@khalidalzaabi) on Dec 12, 2014 at 4:50am PST

After I found out about the accident I started checking out photos and videos of the event and noticed a fire truck parked on the side of the track. I quietly thought to myself that can’t be safe for the driver if his car crashes into it and I thought of the Jules Bianchi crash in Suzuka this past year. Later on in the day a car crashed hard into the fire truck and luckily missed some firemen who were standing next to the truck as well.

It’s pretty cool that more motorsporting events are taking place in Kuwait but a catastrophic incident at one event would end up setting us back a very long time.

I have no idea how this happened but somehow a valet driver at Salhiya managed to crash a Porsche hard into a pillar inside their underground parking lot. Hopefully the valet driver is fine but damn wtf?

Dashboard cameras are cameras you mount in your car and record everything that takes place in front of you while you’re driving. I’ve been wanting to get a dash cam for sometime now but majority of the dash cams I had seen online were cheap looking no name ones. Although they were all very affordable and some had even gotten some great reviews, I was holding out for something better. If I was going to mount the camera on my windshield and have it in my face all day, I wanted something that at least looked decent and well made. Then out of the blue Garmin announced they were releasing a dash cam one day and I knew that was the one I was getting.

I’ve had the Garmin Dash Cam 10 for a few weeks now so I feel ready to give it a proper review.

[YouTube]

As expected, like all their products the Garmin Dash Cam is very well built. The unit feels very solid and looks great… until you mount it up on your windshield that is. I had a Garmin Navigator previously mounted in my car and it looked really sleek. I had the USB power cable come up from behind the dash board and plug in to the rear of the unit and because the suction cup is behind the unit the navigator looked like it was floating in front of the windshield. In my head I imagined the same would apply to the dash cam but I couldn’t have been so wrong. Even though the Garmin Dash Cam is pretty compact, once you connect the large suction cup to it and mount it into place it instantly doubles in height and becomes quite bulky. Then to make matters worse is the location of the USB plug, it plugs into the bottom right hand side of the device. That means I have ugly wire clutter around the unit adding to the overall visual pollution I now have on my windshield. I don’t understand why Garmin couldn’t have found a better solution, it’s like the designer who worked on the unit didn’t take anything into consideration. I mean they should have know people would most likely mount the dash cam on the left side of the windshield near the driver like everyone does with their navigators or that they will be mounted in the center of the windshield. So why would you have the power plug on the right? Wouldn’t it make sense to have it either on the left, the back side (like with my Garmin Navigator) or on the top left side of the device?

With those negatives out of the way it’s time to talk about some of the positives. The device works great. I have my unit set up to turn on and start recording automatically when I start the car and then to shutoff and stop recording when I turn off the car. I also have it set up so that once the memory card runs out of space to start recording over older videos. That means the dash cam operates continuously without any sort of action from me which is very convenient.

[YouTube]

The video quality isn’t anything close to say GoPro quality but then again these videos serve a different purpose. The camera can record up to 1080p and as you can see in the sample videos the license plates are easy to read both during the day and night. Obviously having a clean and crack free windshield improves the quality and in my videos you can see one of my window cracks on the right side of the footage which is a bit annoying but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

The Garmin Dash Cam 10 costs $200 which is really expensive compared to other more popular no brand dash cams. I originally didn’t mind paying this much because I expected a product that would be visually pleasing when mounted but now I know the Garmin is overpriced. The quality of the footage isn’t so different from the no name dash cams neither is the operating method so the Garmin really doesn’t have a major advantage to cost this much. But, since I already bought mine its too late for me but for anybody else I’d recommend they look at the alternatives carefully before deciding on the garmin.

For those interested, here is the dash cam on [Amazon]
They have the Dash Cam 20 as well which comes with GPS and records other data like your speed. I would recommend not going with that option if you tend to speed a lot.