My boyz Khurram and Khawar snapped these pictures of a 2007 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class prototype undergoing hot weather testing in Dubai yesterday.
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2008 Mercedes C-Class in Dubai
Here are some pictures taken by my friends Bjorn and Chicco of a prototype 2008 Mercedes C-Class (W204) undergoing hot weather testing in Dubai:
2008 Infinity G35 sedan?
I saw this car today behind the Emirates Towers in Dubai. Sorry about the bad quality of the picture, it took me a little while to figure out it might be a prototype of a future Infinity and it was hard to take the picture while shifting gears (was driving the Aston).
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At first I thought someone had played a joke on the owner of the car because the Infinity badges were covered up and someone had drawn a Hyundai logo on it instead…but then I noticed that the Infinity logos on the wheels were also missing. When I got home I did a little search on the Internet to see whether my hunch was right, and sure enough I found some other pictures of a similar G35 prototype…which seem to have been taken at the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai.
The main differences I can tell are that the twin exhausts are now separated on either side of the rear apron, the more rounded rear with integrated spoiler, and new location of the G35 badge further up on the trunk lid.
EDIT: Turns out this is a 2007 G35 sedan which will be publicly unveiled in September, followed by a new coupe which might be a 2008 model year vehicle.
Where are the Finals???
I can’t believe it’s the summer of 2006 and I still can’t find a way to watch the NBA Finals live in Dubai…either on the cable/satellite TV or on the Internet. At most I can buy the video from Google Video or iTunes 24h later which kinda spoils the fun. If anyone knows of any way to watch the games live in Dubai, please post a comment.
2008 BMW X5 spotted in Dubai
AutoSpies.com has posted a bunch of pictures of the next generation BMW X5 which was recently photographed undergoing hot weather testing in Dubai (yes, summer is here unfortunately). I guess I’ll have to start carrying my digital camera again as the other manufacturers bring their cars in for testing over the summer.
Rumored updates for 2007 Mercedes G-Class
I’m not sure these updates are 100% confirmed so consider them rumors for now:
On 1 September 2006 there will be a small facelift for the G Class which will continue to be built alongside the GL Class to 2010 and beyond. The G 320, G 270 CDI and G 400 CDI will no longer be built. Instead there will be a G 320 CDI (OM642) with 224 bhp. A G 420 CDI is not planned. The G 500 with 296 bhp and the G 55 AMG Kompressor with 476 bhp stay in the programme. The G 320 CDI and the G 500 will be equipped with the seven gear 7G-Tronic automatic gearbox as standard. All three models will incorporate Bi-Xenon adaptive headlights as standard, too. A few colours will be changed, tealit blue is new and emerald black is cancelled. It’s worth mentioning that the G 320 CDI will be the only model with black bumpers front and rear, body coloured being an option. The interior remains unchanged. There is a new interior package option (no extra price on the G 500) consisting of seats and door lining in ARCTICO fake leather and floors covered in resistant rubber. All changes will be incorporated into production from 1 September so that orders will be accepted in the next few weeks.
2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage updates
Aston Martin has some minor updates planned for the 2007 model year for both the V8 Vantage and the DB9. This is a list of changes for the V8 Vantage though many of these (but not all) will also be present on the DB9:
2007 MY V8 changes:
New seats
Full Leather (standard)
3-position Memory Seats (optional)
Two-stage seat heating (optional as part of heated seat option)
Twin Lumbar support adjustment (standard)
High level electric seat release (standard) (button moves seat forward for access to area behind seat)
Occupant Classification Sensing for passenger airbag (standard)
“Head Thorax” side airbag (standard)
Non-standard leather colors (allows picking/paying for infinite leather)
Antracite finish on 19″ wheels (optional) (looks very techy/cool to me – will depend on car color selected…)
Sports tyres (Pirelli P-Zero Corsa) (optional w/19″ rims) (much lower wear rating, not as good in the wet, but will be the ultimate “handling” tire)
Front Stone Guards (optional)
LEDs in door handle cuts (cool!) (standard)
Key fob boot release (standard) (first push unlocks boot, second push “pops” it…)
Auto-Dimming mirror w/3-position garage door opener (optional)
Revised battery disconnect (battery reconnects when key is put in ignition, rather than having to push the button in the rear)
John has some pictures and additional details on his blog. These improvements result in a 3% increase in base price.
There is also a convertible version planned and AutoExpress has the scoop:
Gay Paree
Virgin Atlantic comes to Dubai
A couple of friends and I gate crashed a Virgin Atlantic party last night at Bab Al Shams celebrating their inaugural flight to Dubai. Richard Branson was there and we enjoyed a nice buffet dinner and traditional Middle Eastern entertainment including four belly dancers.
I’m glad they have started on this route as both British Airways and Emirates need the competition to bring fares down and increase the level of service on this sector. Many people will also prefer flying Virgin all the way from California and Las Vegas to Dubai rather than using BA which is the only option at the moment. The Virgin Upper Class is far superior to the Business Class on both Emirates and BA.
UPDATE: I just saw a half-page ad in the newspaper from Etihad Airways saying “With 25 Etihad flights a week, the UK is hardly virgin territory.” This is basically a response to the launch of Virgin Atlantic’s service to Dubai. For those who don’t know, Etihad is the third “national carrier” of the United Arab Emirates. The other two are Emirates and Air Arabia, but none of these airlines belong to the U.A.E. federal government. Etihad belongs to Abu Dhabi, Emirates to Dubai, and Air Arabia to Sharjah.
Anyway, my point is that after seeing this ad I decided to figure out how many flights per week there are between the UAE and the UK. It turns out there are a lot. Emirates has 92 flights per week between Dubai and the UK, Etihad has 25 per week between Abu Dhabi and various UK destinations, and then there are services from British Airways, Virgin, Bangladesh Biman, and Royal Brunei which bring the grand total to approximately 122 flights per week yet it’s always difficult to get a seat and decent fare. I also found that Dubai is the second busiest destination out of London Heathrow after New York.
Transition to Intel Macs – Developer’s Perspective
I came across two good blog posts from Mac software developers on the complex issues involved in porting existing, large Mac applications to run natively on Intel (x86) based Macs. One is from Scott Byer who works on Photoshop at Adobe:
…That leaves doing the work for real – taking the whole application over into XCode and recompiling as a Universal Binary. And that’s no small task…
Rick Schaut over at the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft writes:
…Whether we had gone through the pain of porting to XCode/GCC in some earlier release of our products, we’d have still had to go through this pain. The time spent doing this work then would have to have come from the features that we were, instead, adding to our programs. Arguing that we should have, somehow, absorbed this pain earlier really has little bearing on the nature and extent of the pain…