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Motoring Middle East’s ‘The Sage’ reveals his favourite motoring moments of the past 12 months

Fraser M. Martin

[Read Shahzad Sheikh’s ‘best of 2013’ recap!]

[Read The Imthishan Awards for 2013]

[Also click here to find out which were the Top 21 biggest stories of 2013 on MME!]

For some reason, and I don’t think it is entirely due to the fact that I am older than the other two, I appear to have been handed a nickname here on Motoring Middle East. Imthi calls me ‘Old Man’ and Shahzad lifts the phone as soon as anyone asks anything about anything from the 1970s or earlier. I have become The Sage in MME terms. Clearly though, it could have been worse – and I have been called worse, sometimes to my face.

Best you don’t ask…

One of the highlights of this year with MME has been that no one has called me ‘Dubai’s’ anything: I’d far rather be The Sage, or Fraser the Grumpy Old Man or just Fraser, than the second-rate answer here, to someone famous from somewhere else. In any case, there are at least three people I know in this game who reckon they are already Dubai’s answer, or in one case the entire Middle East’s answer, to Jeremy Clarkson! Lucky Jez, eh?

Plodding over to Studio City, which actually might be more realistically called Studio Hamlet, up near the Ranches has been a periodic highlight too, as sometimes all but more usually just a couple of us, go in and railroad Dr James Piecowye on Dubai Eye’s Car Talk programme.

He does a splendid job of trying to corral his guests and generally retain some sort of control: but can listeners see what we can see? The look of abject fear, as he becomes hogtied and hornswoggled on the edges of a spirited ‘exchange of opinions,’ is a sight for sore eyes indeed.

I enjoy those one hour slots every week or so though scheduling has meant that responses have sometimes been scant: being live on air after an hour or so of football talk tends to polarise audiences. Hopefully, when we start again next week, the schedule will be kinder than it was in 2013.

Cars? Oh yeah – cars! I have not actually done much in the way of testing this last year: my erstwhile colleagues in Social Media have been particularly antisocial when it comes to sharing out the toys and whilst I enjoyed a barrage of cool wheels as part of the judging responsibilities on the MEMA panel, not many of them were with me for long enough to form any more than a cursory opinion.

Fraser: ‘Can I borrow…’
Shahzad: ‘No’

Listing the things I did enjoy, irrespective of which of my hats I was wearing at the time, is easier than prying keys out of the vice-like grip of either Shahzad or Imthi – the only time I get to drive what they get to drive is when a spare pair of hands is needed on a multi-car photo opportunity! OK, that is not strictly true, but you catch my drift.

The supercharged Range Rover Sport was the singular most stunning vehicle of the year: if I had to pick one car – what I call the Briefcase Car (where someone gives you a briefcase full of money and tells you to buy whatever you want as long as you are prepared to drive it, and nothing else, for a whole year) – the Range Sport would be it. Staggering on-road performance combined with the usual superb off-road attributes makes this car the best all-rounder on the planet.

At the other end of the scale, at least in pricing, I really, really enjoyed the Renault Duster. It came in for a fair amount of stick on the radio from Imthi last year but when we finally convinced those nice folk at Renault to let me have one, albeit in two-wheel drive, I found it to be about the most honest car I have driven in years. The Duster is a bargain, it has as much kit as most people need (as opposed to want!) and it is lively enough to please. I could not find anything not to like in it at all.

I loved driving old chum of MME, Gaurav Dhar’s tasty Oldsmobile Toronado. It is a 1963 car the size of a small house and was blissfully simple. Massive engine driving the front wheels and suspension made from cake, it was anathema to practically anything available for sale today and the joy of it is that because it does everything slowly, so do you. Having the opportunity to pilot this barge was a fulfilled lifelong ambition – the closest I got to the groundbreaking Toronado until this year, was a Corgi Toy.

Point-and-squirt memories of the year are filled with a McLaren MP4, caned up Jebel Jais and brought down much more sedately, a brace of Porsches the numbers of which I cannot recall, some spanking of AMG Mercedes at YAS and a brief encounter with a scarily expensive Lotus Evora.

‘It matches my gate, I’m keeping it’

There have been lots of other drives, most notably the delicious Bentley Continental Convertible in Lemon Meringue Pie colours which Mr. S and I photographed in Mushrif Park, and more mundanely, whatever else has been around the pages, and not broken by other motor-noters, before it comes to me.

Still boldly going…

My own cars have behaved as expected. The Jeep continues to serve honestly in all conditions, the trusty Jazz, despite the odd hiccup continues, like its owner, to defy the onset of aging and the BMW has been a costly error of judgement: really sweet to drive and surprisingly economical for such a big luxobarge, it has reached that looks-defying age that means almost everything is going expensively wrong! I will start the New Year with another collapsed rear suspension unit!

Fraser: ‘Please Jaguar can I…
Jaguar: ‘No’

What of the coming year? I look forward to having a drive in some of the 2013 stuff I have missed: the F-Type Jaguar, the Rolls Royce Wraith, the 4×4 Renault Duster and one or two others. PRs reading this should mark diaries accordingly, please! I hope to be able to get through the year without having to remortgage my vegetable garden to support continuing repairs on the BMW; either that or I will have to convert it to run on tomatoes.

And it would be nice to think that 2014 will be a bit nicer to everyone!

Happy New Year.