Record number of cars and crowd at MME Meet 4
Dubai Festival City hosted the largest Motoring Middle East Car and Bike Meet yet
By Shahzad Sheikh
Any complaints about it getting a bit hot, blowy and sandy, seemed to have been dismissed by the sheer passion and enthusiasm of owners and visitors to the fourth Motoring Middle East Car and Bike Meet staged on Friday 30th March at Dubai Festival City.
Held in association with Titanio Auto, Dubai Festival City, Project A Automobile, Rolling Art Emporium and the Hard Rock Café, last weekend’s ‘Mega-Meet’ was the biggest and most spectacular so far.
With a kick-off time of 2pm and the mercury worrying close to 40 degrees, we might have expected a slow start, but by 2.30pm the massive car park, sitting right opposite Marks & Spencers (next to the valet parking area) at Dubai Festival City, was already getting close to half full.
Over the course of the day, in fact, we stopped counting cars at around 130, and still they kept coming, so we estimate nearly 150. Equally with people, participants, and spectators, we saw the biggest footfall (estimated at over 300) ever with a lot of shoppers and families from the DFC Mall wandering over to see what was going on and checking out the stunning array of cars on display.
Once again, we had massive support from the amazing UAE Mustang Club with over 35 cars in attendance, but first to turn up was the UAE Land Rover Owners Club. Designating areas for American muscle cars, off-roaders and SUVs, Japanese cars, modern sports and supercars, classics and bikes this time, we saw stunning collections of Hondas and S2000s, Seat Cupras, VW GTis, souped-up Nissan Z cars, classics and more, proving many clubs had joined in to support the ever-growing Meet – with promises of even more for the next one!
On display were such amazing cars as a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Bentley Mulsanne, AC Cobra, Porsche 911 GT3, Lotus Evora, Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, Lamborghini Gallardo. And we brought along a new Chrysler 300C and the rowdy Roush Stage 3 Mustang, one of the unofficial stars of the show.
Amazing classics including our signature 1927 red Hot Rod, a Ferrari Testarossa, Fiat 500, Pontiac GTO, Plymouth Cuda, Ford Gran Torino (the Starsky and Hutch car), Honda NSX and the Mazda RX7, Trans Ams and Camaros amongst many many more. Just check out the incredible gallery and video from the event, plus there are links below to galleries posted by other participants.
For the first time at this Meet, we also held a fun quiz from 4-5pm and managed to give out 30 prizes to winners. And the feedback so far is that people really enjoyed this new element of the Meet – if you were there, please let us know what you thought of the quiz, and indeed the rest of the Meet as a whole in the comments section below.
We’d like to thank all the visitors and participants for their overwhelming support and goodwill and send a massive shout-out to all those who helped us organise it, including our sponsors.
The aim is to continue these on a near monthly basis, but the sheer size of the event now means that we are in desperate need of more sponsors to come on board to help us continue the Meets. If you or your company is interested in supporting the Meets, do get in touch by emailing us at MME@MotoringME.com. We have proposals ready and waiting for you!
See our gallery below – plus more albums:
http://tinyurl.com/Pratik-Raju-Joshi
http://tinyurl.com/Ejaz-Ismail
http://tinyurl.com/CaRsPhotography
