Motoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guides

Diary of a car-tester – ‘A week of driving’

By Fraser M. Martin

I’ve crammed four pretty special cars in during the last week, as those following MME on our Facebook page will have noticed. My neighbours will be thinking I have won some sort of lottery, since the combined value has been almost 3.5 million dirhams, but as I often say, if it is not white with yellow and black bits on it, it won’t be mine!

The real reason for doing so much driving in other people’s expensive toys is that as a judge on the panel for the Middle East Motoring Awards, I cannot vote on anything I have not actually driven.

That seems a bit harsh of course, but there is good sense behind the rule: it’s easy to form an opinion on something based on the opinion of others, but no matter how well respected these other views may be, it is too easy to fall into the PR trap. I had one car out a couple of weeks ago which had been raved about; I expected it to be good and was prepared to enjoy it, but getting behind the wheel and actually driving it was a disappointment. There will be no names, so don’t ask!

There will, however, be a few more extravagant toys before Judgement Day.

Rolls-Royce Ghost

Taking this week’s cars in reverse order of driving, I have just been out for my traditional breakfast in the Rolls Royce Ghost. There are few cars in ‘brown’ (and I’m sure that won’t be the description on the official colour chart) that I think actually suit the colour – in fact not since the original Range Rover two door, do I recollect anything that looked good in brown – but the regional office Ghost is painted in a stunning brick-burgundy which looks almost good enough to drink! With the black and burgundy trim inside, the colour just so suits the car, you wonder why there are not more of them about!

I drove the Ghost at launch in the US a number of years ago, and though I recollect it as a fine car, having just spent only 24 hours with it here in Dubai, I have needed to revise my original thoughts in an upward direction. It might have been being stuck behind a fat bloke on a Harley, who would not get over a bit on the Coastal Highway, that coloured my view of the California car, but hustling along some of my favourite roads in this region really set the Ghost apart from the previous drive. There is no ‘dowager’ status attached to these cars – they can pick up their skirts and fairly dance along if you have room. The steering is light but loads up nicely when taxed and the big wheel is a joy to hold. The Spirit of Ecstasy, proudly mounted on the prow makes an excellent marker for guiding the Ghost through the fast sweepers that can be found around here, if you know where to look.

There is massive torque as well as engine braking – slowing down for a roundabout will see the Ghost ease back almost by itself in preparation for a surge on the exit. The flow is sublime and at no time do you think that it will bite you. At a more leisurely pace, cruising at 120kph on a feathered throttle, the ‘Power Reserve’ meter shows that one is using 5% of what is available!

It really is a wonderful car and there are so many subtleties about it, you ask yourself why more manufacturers don’t get a hold of one for a few days and have a jolly good look at what makes such a car just right.

Porsche 911 Carrera S coupe & cabriolet

The two Porsche Carrera 911 S models that came in quick succession are part of the categories being judged at the MEMA event. They are broadly similar, being pretty much identical bar the roof materials.

The hardtop is a fine motor and sports all the usual attributes you expect on a Porsche – the attention to detail on the interior is worthy of cars twice the price and the finish on the stainless steel (or is it burnished aluminium?) is second to none. Those ingots, dull-polished to perfection make the difference between being blinded in the car and being assured that the sun is, again, simply shining!

I took both cars on spirited runs and there was not much to choose between them. There is a refinement about Porsches that I don’t think you get in Italian stuff costing the same, and whilst you might recognise the odd Audi switch, it won’t seem out of place.

I actually preferred the Cabriolet, though there was little opportunity to have the roof down. Up in the mountains during the week, the temperature reached an indicated 50 degrees, but the soft-top let in so little of it that I didn’t really notice until I got out of the car.

You can’t really see out of the back of the Cabriolet with the roof up (and the test car seemed not to have a reversing camera fitted, which I would have thought something of an oversight in the spec process), but with it being a little bit heavier, and therefore a little bit more ‘planted’, I found it a more enjoyable car to press on with.

Finding some new roads to play on was a delightful bonus. There is still a slightly disconcerting shimmy when you push hard out of a corner on these cars but it’s a good warning and the steering is generally much more communicative than it used to be. The lock is pretty amazing as well, but then you’d kind of expect that with the engine at the back.

I learned something on the Porsche drives too. Stick-shifting is immeasurably more efficient, and a lot less embarrassing, than getting it wrong on the wheel-mounted paddles: I daresay that if you actually owned one of these cars, you’d get used to them, but the paddles are counter-intuitive for a first-time drive. Having said that, and having sorted it out to my undeniable satisfaction, the PDK gearbox is probably the greatest step forward in transmission this side of chain drive! Why anyone would want a manual box when a system as efficient and bloody quick as this, is available, is utterly beyond me.

Nissan GT-R

The other car I drove in the last week, apart from my trusty Jazz which still serves well over 200,000 kilometres in, was the 2012 Nissan GTR. I was scheduled to take delivery of the car and return it two days later but delivery was delayed, and those kind people (and you know who you are) at Nissan and the PR agency made the best possible compensation, and let me keep the car over the weekend – [Fraser then kindly brought it to our Meet, Ed].

The GTR is a complete monster of a car, easily the quickest thing I have ever sat behind the wheel of, at 0-100kph in 2.8 seconds, and quite frankly, a brilliant tool. It is noisy, in the nicest possible way, has all the mechanical coarseness of a race car (though not as mechanical as the Lexus LFA) and is an absolute hoot! It is not a car you could drive every day if you wanted to retain a driving licence for long – it simply begs to be driven hard, and relishes every minute of it.

I had the opportunity during the Dubai 24 Hours at the beginning of this year to drive the Nissan Juke R, as the Course Opening Car, and between getting comfortable with the controls and getting a feel for it before it counted, probably did no more than ten laps of the circuit.

The Juke R is the GTR in a smaller body, and with the trim, instrumentation and general comforts of the big sister, I can happily say that the new GTR is everything you could possibly want in a street racer. It is blisteringly quick, absolutely planted, almost totally forgiving and one of the most serious cars I have ever piloted in earnest.

Could I live with one? The answer would have to be no: two doors would rule it out for a start, as would anything else with two doors, I’m afraid. Also I would lose my licence; I would have to spend too much money cleaning the passenger seats and I would be completely exhausted every time I drove it just because it eggs you on and draws you inexorably to explore its stratospheric limits.

Was it good? Hell, yeah!

That was it. A full week in cars I will never own, and what a privilege it was too. It can be a very nice job, this, if you can even call it that!

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it...

Read Shahzad’s review of the new 911 coupe and the same cabriolet that Fraser drove