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Doha Abu Dhabi

The cars needed in rapidly “No matter if you’re driving on the Talking with the local members changing cities. streets of Doha or driving in the overturned his assumption that road suburbs, there’ s construction handling on poorly maintained roads would everywhere. They’ re erecting buildings be customers’ highest priority. They were The Drive Project team spent a and putting in a subway. With the interested in driving comfort, in fuel whirlwind week driving through several incredible speed of change in the city, countries. Concentrating on the roads what they want from their cars must during our short stay, we searched for also be changing. A fleet company hints on how to make ever-better cars that came here to do market research by observing the way people live their also said that the competitors were lives. Yasunari Fujii of the Lexus Body changing virtually every day. Driving Engineering Division peppered the local in the Middle East has made me drivers with questions on many topics realize that we have high market share while in the car together. The Japanese in these countries and are well loved, team members were not allowed to but at the same time it has also driven drive in Qatar due to regulations, but home how we have to be constantly this did not change Fujii’ s approach. changing as well.” economy, and in the smoothness of the reaching the ground that men wear. Do they normally would as much as possible. car’ s response. In fact, people in the Middle they get caught on the car when A local female employee was also driving East may have quite exacting expectations they’ re getting in and out? Or the fact on the team, and she would sound her horn for cars and their performance. that a lot of people wear sandals while to warn other cars as she darted between Kuwait, the fourth country in the Middle driving. And in Kuwait, where sudden lanes. She says people here want Eastern leg of the Drive Project, is an acceleration and braking is standard luxurious, powerful cars. She showed the Islamic country with strict customs second driving practice in heavy city traffic and Japanese team members riding with her a to Saudi Arabia, but its cities were larger the roads in the suburbs have rough glimpse of what the locals drive like, and it and wealthier than we had pictured. We surfaces, they still wear sandals to was more than they had imagined. crossed the bay on the Sheikh Jaber drive. Is that not a hazard? I know there Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway, the longest must be points here that we should be People have different car sea bridge in the world spanning some 36 evaluating, and that is sobering.” km, and returned to the city. There are Takagi was serving as the team’s vice cultures than Japan. major traffic jams in the evening as people captain and riding in the lead car. While come and go from the urban core, and being careful of speeding violations, he also The temperatures had not been too there are also a lot of accidents caused by tried to have the local drivers drive like hot on the Middle Eastern leg of the Drive the extremely close proximity of cars to other cars. Knowing how people use cars where they live is directly connected to the work of Katsuhiro Takagi of the Advanced Vehicle Engineering Development Division. Takagi evaluates vehicle driving performance, and his job involves checking more than 2,400 performance items. Nonetheless, he says that he has not given much thought to Muslims. “For example, take the long robes Project, but in Bahrain the mercury rose He went on to describe some of the 3.4 to close to 30 degrees Celsius in the local feedback in detail. “Customers 3.5 Kuwait City Iran daytime. In summer, the temperature is love Toyotas. But they also often tell Kuwait said to hit 50℃ even in the shade. Local me that they’ re boring.” While abstract, leader Nadim Eladas says that a car’s air this feedback is related to the central conditioner is quite obviously important. focus of the Drive Project. Customers “Toyota’ s AC is the best. But if it want the cars to offer more fun Saudi Arabia gets over fifty degrees, it sometimes moments—not only in their design but Manama 3.6 doesn’ t work as well. The also like a feeling of excitement when Bahrain dashboard gets too hot and you sit down in the seat. Nadim’ s Doha 3.3 sometimes starts to creak. And then comments are what you might expect Qatar what a lot of customers comment on from Bahrain, which hosts Formula One is road noise and vibration. Bahrain races, and hints at the country’ s mature has oil fields in the south and cities car culture. What the people want from in the middle and the north, and the cars is not just performance—they also roads are rough in some spots.” know the fun of driving on a deeper level.

Distance: 431km Duration: March 3-6, 2019 Days: 4 days Vehicles: Land Cruiser 200, Hilux, Lexus LX570, Prado, Fortuner, RAV4, Rush