I'm not a petrol head. I don't watch motor sport (saw my first F1 a few weeks back because it was in India) and I don't grip over horse power numbers or turbo sizes. I like to keep a general knowhow of what kind of cars are available in the market and their specifications. What I do generally obsess about is the design of the car and lately its handling (thanks to my awesome Mondeo).
With my foray into photography over the past 4 years, this obsession has quadrupled thanks to my constant visual play with light on sheet metal. So when you put a few hundred cars under one roof i.e. the Dubai Motor Show, I go a little crazy (Read: me standing in awkward positions to absorb the aesthetics of the car). Oddly this year I didn’t go crazy even though I spent a whopping 8 hours at the show shooting videos and photos while listening to the boring and rather long press conferences. I had access to some of the most exotic cars available i.e. from a
McLaren MP4 12C to a freaking
Lamborghini Aventador to a customised special edition Rolls Royce Phantom convertible but simply put I was bored.
I remember the days I used to cycle down to a car showroom called ‘Classic Cars’ on Salahuddin Road where I’d spent most of my time wiping my drool off my face. I was around 10 years old as I’d watched my friend hug a
Lamborghini Diablo while I stared dreamily at the under body of a
Ferrari 348. And then there was the
Ferrari F40 and I was sold.
Like every other person I have a few dream cars. A
Porsche Boxter S being the more attainable one whiles a
1969 Corvette Stingray being the not so attainable one. And then there is the one I don’t talk about much i.e. the
Ferrari 250 GTO. Quoting Jeremy when he had a 250 GTO parked at the Top Gear track; "I wish, almost more than anything, I could get into this now, and take it for a drive. But, even though Top Gear is made by one of the largest and richest broadcasting organizations, we simply cannot afford the insurance." Do I really have to say how much a 250 GTO costs?
I have a matchbox car model stashed somewhere that I’ve own for the past 15 years. I love it to bits and got extremely possessive when my niece tried to lay claim on it.
Anyway here are a few pictures from the
2011 Dubai Motor show.
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