Category: Automotive

Back in September, the Ford dealer brought in some demo Broncos to display in their new showroom but the actual cars are now finally being delivered to customers who pre-ordered. I’ve seen one on the road so far and two are currently up for sale at a used car dealership in Sharq. As expected, the prices are currently inflated due to high demand and not enough cars. The Sharq dealer was selling the 2-door ‘Big Bend’ model for 16,500KD and the 4-door for 17,500 while the actual dealership price is 12,400 and 14,400 respectively.

If you don’t want to pre-order a car and have money to splurge, here is the location of the used car dealership on Google Maps.

There is a very cool retro RV parked on the Gulf Road near Burj Hammam. It’s been there for a few days at least and looks super cool. No idea who its for but really curious to see if the inside is also retro-looking. The exterior makes a great backdrop for a 70s photoshoot.

Yesterday I was stuck in traffic on the First Ring Road due to an accident and I had to watch a fire truck struggle to get through on their way to the accident. Unlike some other highways, the First Ring Road still has an emergency lane on the left side with the rumble strips but people were on the lane preventing the emergency vehicles from getting to the scene of the accident.

I know most of the emergency lanes in Kuwait have been removed but I’m curious to know if hospitals, police and firefighters have voiced their concerns with this decision. They can’t be ok with this can they?

If you’ve ever looked at buying a cool used sports car, maybe a Porsche or a Lambo you’ve probably noticed that you’ve struggled to find a lot of options locally. It’s a fairly common problem, someone is looking to buy an old sports car but there aren’t any available for sale. There were always rumors about the cars being sold to Europe, that there were some German guys in Kuwait who pick up used cars for cheap and then export them to Germany where they get sold. It sounded like a myth but a quick look at the Instagram account of AlSarraf Motors, a used car dealer, and you’ll see a lot of his cars do get sold abroad, and mainly to Germany. According to the caption they posted on the picture above, the white Porsche was their 88th Porsche exported. That’s an insane number for one brand, at one used car dealer in a small market like Kuwait.

Last year there was a 2009 Porsche 911 for sale in the blogs classified section for 4,500KD (pictured above), and a few weeks ago I got the following email from the person who bought it:

Hello, I bought your car from Jaap in the Netherlands. I am very happy with it. I have a couple of questions.
1 do you still have the service history and instruction books
2 do you still have 1 key? I received the car with 1 key
Thank you for replying to My message.

So I emailed the guy who originally had the car listed the car for sale and supposedly car sellers in Europe search for cars on popular websites in Kuwait, and then use a local guy to purchase and export the cars where they end up selling it for double or quadruple the amount in Europe. This has caused a problem locally because previously you could buy a used Porsche, Lambo, Ferrari, Maserati, etc.. for a reasonable price, but now because so many are getting exported, it’s causing the prices of the cars to inflate locally due to less being available for sale.

It doesn’t seem like a big deal unless you’re into cars and are looking to pick up an affordable used sports car and realize there aren’t any available. Not sure how this issue can be solved, maybe an export tax? Maybe it isn’t even a problem that needs solving since the cars will most probably have a better life in Europe anyway. It’s an interesting situation.

Looks like cops are getting police buggies to use this winter in the desert. That’s not a bad idea considering how a lot more people have started hanging out in the desert but what I’d also like to see are garbage buggies.

The amount of garbage I came across in the desert last year was just so sad. Since people just like to litter everywhere we might as well have desert cleaners that go around picking up after everyone.

The other day I posted about my amazing post office experience when the tires I had ordered for my car were ready to pick up a day after arriving in Kuwait. My experience was extremely smooth and the process of picking up my tires from the post office took less than 10 minutes. Well, turns out things weren’t as perfect as they seemed.

Over the weekend I went to get the tires installed on my car when I noticed the size label on one of the tires was incorrect. Instead of 17″ tires for the front of my Lotus, I had 20″ ones. I was really upset since it meant I had to spend a few more days lugging around tires in my trunk until I could get a hold of customer support in the UK and figure this mess out. Yesterday, I finally got a hold of them and they told me to just email them photos of the incorrect tires as proof which wasn’t an issue. But while taking photos of the shipping label on the tires I noticed someone else’s name. That’s when it hit me, the UK company didn’t send me the wrong tires, the post office just handed me someone else’s tires.

Luckily because Kuwait is so tiny, I knew the person on the shipping label and I knew he had gone to the post office the day after me to pick up his tires as well. So I just called him up and told him I had his tires and that he hopefully had mine. He had ordered 8 and so didn’t notice 2 of the tires were actually mine. So we swapped tires and it all worked out in the end. But yeah, the post office basically gave me someone else’s package by mistake 🤷🏼

Yesterday photos of a Porsche 911 Turbo S that’s for sale went viral on popular car blogs due to the color of the interior being so wild. Turns out the car was actually commissioned by the former Prime Minister of Kuwait.

Complete Restoration by Porsche Classic in Germany performed between 2010 and 2014 -Commissioned in Vanilla Yellow over two-tone Porsche Orange and Yellow Leather interior -Commissioned by His Highness Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah, the 6th Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait -Outfitted with endless Porsche Exclusive options throughout -Contains original Commission Meeting Documents and complete restoration invoice totaling 446,500 Euro. -only 106km since restoration -full service just completed

If you’re interested in buying the car it’s on sale for just $888,888. For more photos of the car, click here.

Thanks XBS

I tried googling for an answer when I wanted to buy a car jack this weekend and couldn’t find anything so if you’re also looking to buy a car jack, this post is for you.

If you want a car jack to use at home when working on your car, the first place you’ll probably check is Ace Hardware or Bin Nisf. Problem is Ace Hardware is really expensive (50KD for a Craftsman car jack) while Bin Nisf didn’t really have anything. Instead, if you’re looking for a car jack one of the best places to go is Al Maroom in Shuwaikh. They have a fairly large selection of jacks and they carry the brand Big Red Jacks. I ended up picking up a 3-ton Big Red Jack for 25KD plus a pair of Big Red floor jack stands for KD10.

If you’re looking for garage jacks, here is their location on Google Maps.

MP Abdullah Al-Turaiji yesterday submitted a proposal to the National Assembly calling to restrict vehicle ownership by expatriates to only two and impose extra fees on any additional vehicles, saying the proposal aims at reducing traffic jams. Turaiji’s proposal calls on the interior ministry to take the necessary measures to restrict the number of vehicles foreign residents can own for personal use to only two “to counter the illegal trade in vehicles, reduce traffic jams” and “ensure there are enough spaces for the use of Kuwaiti citizens at commercial malls, markets and public places”. Source

Can someone explain how me owning more than 2 cars causes traffic jams? Is there a way to drive all my cars at the same time cuz if there is I’d love to do that?

A couple of weeks ago when I posted about my Datsun, a reader suggested I install a hidden GPS tracker on it. I thought about it and it kinda made sense so I decided to see how much one would cost. After doing a lot of research, I ended up getting a GPS tracker called Tracki.

There were a number of reasons I chose Tracki including:
– it came with a sim card
– it would work worldwide
– the monthly subscription was around $14
– it has a 4 out 5 rating on Amazon with 24,000+ reviews
– the tracker cost only $10!

Other things I also looked at were battery life and what kind of connection it had, in this case, Tracki charged over normal micro-USB and battery life depended on how often I wanted it to ping back the location. For example, if I wanted to update the location every 2 hours, then the battery life would last 12-15 days. If I wanted the location to be updated every 6 hours then the battery life would last 22-26 days. On the other hand, if I wanted live tracking where the tracker would update the location every few minutes, then battery life would only last 3-5 days.

The battery life clearly isn’t that great but there is a simple workaround. You could either hardwire the tracker into your car either by getting an adapter to plug it into your OBD port (most new cars have it), or you could run a USB cable to the tracker from your cars USB port of fusebox, that way whenever the car is on it’s charging your tracker. In my case, I decided I would just strap a power bank to it. I have a few laying around the house that I don’t use and one is more than enough to keep the tracker running for a couple of months. Even if I have to swap the battery out every month that wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

So does it work? Yeah, it does. At any time I can just launch the Tracki app and check and see where my car is or where it was. So not only can I know where my car is at any given moment, but I can also view the history of where it’s been. That’s useful if say your car was stolen and then taken and parked somewhere underground. You could at least track the car before it went underground. And then if say for some reason the tracker can’t get you an accurate GPS point, it can continue to give you a rough idea of where it is using wifi or cell towers to triangulate its location.

Attaching the tracker to your car is very easy, you can either use the magnet on the back of the unit to attach it to a metal surface, or use the double-sided tape that came with it to stick it somewhere. If you’re connecting it to the collar of your pet, you could use the rubber case which has a lanyard or keychain hole in it.

There are a couple of negatives with Track the first being the Tracki app. It just feels over-complicated and buggy. For example, sometimes I try to save settings and get an error when in reality it actually saved the settings. Also, battery life is probably the biggest issue. Not sure if it’s because I was playing with the settings too much or what exactly, but I have the tracker set up to update the location every 4 hours which means the battery life should last 18-22 days, but it ended up lasting me just a week. It’s not that big of a deal since I’ll be strapping a battery pack to it, but if you’re using the tracker say to track your pet, you can’t really attach a battery pack to it. One more thing that is annoying is that 1 subscription covers 1 device. So if you get a tracker for all your cars you don’t get to share an account or even a discounted rate.

If you’re interested in getting Tracki, the price on Amazon fluctuates between $9.88 and $14.88. Amazon can also ship the device to you directly and that cost me an additional $21.59. You could ship it to your Aramex Shop&Ship account and pay less but I didn’t want to wait that long. Here is the link to Tracki on Amazon.com

I’ve previously posted about the PASS and Mawqif apps, two apps that offer you ticketless and cashless parking. I love using them because I love the convenience of not having to get a ticket or look for coins in my car to pay for parking. I now have two apps on my phone dedicated to parking which is kinda annoying but it might get worse because I found out another new app called PARK IN just got launched.

It must be frustrating for businesses when they come up with a good idea only to see copycats pop up seemingly overnight. Competition is usually good but in this case, it’s going to go from being a convenient thing having a parking app, to an annoyance if users will have to install different apps for different lots and manage wallets across them all.

PARK IN just launched so they don’t have a lot of parking lots they work with, only two right now, Souk Al Wataniya in Kuwait City and International Hospital in Salmiya. If you want to download this app as well then click here.

Last Wednesday I decided to head to the car auction in Ardiya. They were auctioning the 60+ cars I posted about earlier that week which were confiscated from one guy. Many of the cars were now classics and so I went with a friend who was interested in one of the cars so we could try and bid on it. The experience was pretty interesting to say the least.

This must have been the most popular car auction ever held in Kuwait due to all the hype built up around the cars. I’d guess 99% of the people there, and there were A LOT of people, had never been to an auction before including myself. Due to the number of people they were expecting to show up, a makeshift setup was put together across the street in an empty lot.

The auction was meant to start at 3PM but ended up starting shortly after 3:30PM. Basic rules were announced at the start, if you win a bid you must come up to the front and give them your civil ID card. You then get it back once you pay for the item. You need to pay on the spot. Knet only, no cash. Pretty simple although no idea how you can pay KD30,000 for a Ferrari Testarossa on your Knet card since I thought there was a 10,000KD limit? No idea.

The whole experience was really casual. The cars weren’t there, so if you hadn’t seen them last weekend in person at the police lot and noted down details like the license plate number, then you were pretty much screwed. There was just a list to go by which you had to print out yourself from their Instagram account or just keep looking at your phone. Most of the items on the list were misspelled and many lacked any details. For example, there were three BMW 8-series for sale and the only way to tell them apart on the list was with their license plate number. So if you hadn’t written down their plate numbers when checking the car out you were out of luck.

The auction moved fairly quickly but because we were right next to the mosque they had to stop twice for a prayer break. Not sure if that’s what they usually do or if they had to do it because we were right outside the mosque and the mosques speakers were louder than the auctions. By 7PM we had gone through two pages worth of cars and it was getting pretty chilly. There were no outdoor lights so the auction turned into a moonlight auction. The majority of the people must have been there for the two Ferraris since most of them left once they were sold. By the time I left only the first few rows of seats were filled.

My friend didn’t win the car, he was interested in a Volvo which he was willing to pay up to 2,000 for but it ended up going for 2,700. I had my eye on a 1997 Alfa Romeo Spider but I wasn’t going to pay over 250KD for it and the car ended up going for 350. Overall I had a good time, it was an interesting experience for sure.

If you ever want to go to a car auction you can find out about upcoming ones on the Instagram account @mzadmoj. The location of the auction is at the Deposit Reserve and Judicial Arbitration Sector Building in Ardiya, here is the location on Google Maps. They usually have the cars on display there it’s just this specific time that things were a bit different due to the circumstances. Let me know if you have any questions below.

Well technically, it’s not an auction specifically for classic cars, but there is an auction coming up this week for cars that were confiscated from a guy and they happen to be mostly classic cars (a video of them being confiscated went viral awhile back). All the cars are being sold as-is since they seem to have been parked for years, but some of which are in really good condition with very low miles. For example, there is a really rare 1983 De Tomaso Deauville which only 244 ever produced going up for auction and this one has just 9,400km on the dial and the plastic factory cover still on the rear seats. The most popular car probably going up for auction is a 1991 Ferrari Testarossa.

All the cars are currently located at the Ahmadi Police Station lot and are viewable by the public which is how I got to check them out yesterday. The actual auction is taking place this Wednesday at 8am in Ardiya. If you’re looking to possibly get an old Maserati, Aston Martin (there is an excellent condition Lagonda), Rolls Royce, BMW 8-series (including an 850CSi), Porsche or Ferrari, then here is the PDF containing all the details.

If you’re interested in getting an up-close look at the new 2022 Range Rover, today is the last day they will be on display since they’re pre-production models and so will be sent off to another destination.

There are two cars on display and you can check them out at the Land Rover dealer in Shuwaikh. Here is their location on Google Maps.

Back in June 2019, I purchased a blue 1972 Datsun 240z (it’s not blue anymore). It was my second 240z since I sold my first one and regretted it, so I bought another one. The car wasn’t in the best of condition so in October 2019 I dropped it off at a garage to get it fully restored. The project was estimated to take around 5 months, 3 months for bodywork, and then 2 months to put everything back together again. That didn’t happen, instead, the project ended up taking over 2 years to complete! 27 months to be exact and last week I finally got my car although still not 100% complete with a bunch of things that I still need to sort out.

Photo I took when I first found the car

So where did things go wrong? Everywhere really, issues popped up every step of the way. I had issues with the body shop, the mechanic, the electrician, with parts I ordered, and then to top it off Covid hit and slowed everything down considerably. Generally speaking, everyone was super slow or very sloppy and I had to and still am double-checking all the work that was done myself. When we first started stripping the paint away from the car we spotted issues that weren’t noticeable before and so that took longer than expected. Thankfully the body shop guys were chill about it but they were also very slow, and with Covid lockdowns and curfews, it brought the work down to a stand still a number of times. Then I had issues with the mechanic who a friend had recommended and that guy’s work turned out to be really clumsy. I brought in an electrician that specializes in Datsuns to wire the car back up and his work also turned out to be very rushed. So now I’m taking note of any issues I spot so I can get them sorted.

I also ran into issues with some upgrades I had for the car. Since I wanted this car to be a daily driver, I upgraded the engine with a modern electronic fuel injection system (FAST EFI), I installed AC and I upgraded the brakes to much more powerful Wilwood’s. The problem is nobody I dealt with had fitted a similar electronic system into a 240z before and I couldn’t find someone who did. So I had to learn everything about it and install and set things up myself.

The previous sentence really summarizes the whole experience. There was no way the car would have been done the way I wanted it to be done if I wasn’t very knowledgeable in the car or researched and learned so much about how things work. When I picked up the car last week for example I barely got it home. Actually, I only made it home with the help of a tow truck since the car switched off on my way home after misfiring and running terribly. After getting home and googling the car symptoms, I realized I might have a problem with the spark plugs so I checked them. Turned out the plugs weren’t screwed in properly, were the wrong size, and were carbon-fouled (you can see how black they are in the photo above). I had a new set of correct plugs that I had previously purchased and after installing them the car started and ran perfectly.

I even ran into issues financially with the car even though that was under my control. When I first started the project I wanted the total thing to cost me KD10,000 including the cost of the car (I bought the car for KD2,750). When I started the project I created an Excel file to track all the expenses and late last year I realized I was going to exceed my budget by a pretty good chunk. The car has to date cost me KD13,800 including the car purchase price. I really didn’t want to pay this much yet it was all my own doing since I kept wanting more and more things.

While thinking about this post one question that popped into my mind is if I’d recommend a full restoration to anyone. I was going to say no at first but that really isn’t fair. I currently actually have another classic that’s being restored right now, a 1980 Toyota FJ40 (the green one above). But, I chose to restore it in the UAE and not here. There is a garage based in Abu Dhabi called Classic Drive (@fj40uae) that specializes in restoring old FJ40’s and Landcruiser 60’s. So far they seem to be doing a great job with the car and moving at a fairly quick pace although they are also behind schedule. All the parts they’re using to build the car are either brand new or restored back to new condition so I’ll basically be getting an FJ40 that looks like it rolled out of the dealer today. So what I will say is this. If you are thinking of restoring a car know that it is going to be a big project and there will be things for you to do as well once it’s done. You need to really love cars, understand them and be patient with them. I know of a lot of people who had their cars restored only to sell them right after since they didn’t want to deal with sorting out the issues that would pop up. It also doesn’t help since we don’t have that many if any specialized garages for classic cars here.

And that’s where I am with the car right now. I’ve been driving it daily since I got it and loving it. Now I just need to finish going through the to-do list and sort all the issues out as they pop up. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments.