Blog
What Running a Car in the UAE Actually Involves
Breakdowns rather than adverts: heat and dust, service schedules, import risk, and what ownership really costs. Every checkable figure carries its source — including the ones that argue against us.
The Range Rover Problem: Nobody Goes Back
The most common thing we hear from Range Rover customers is that they cannot find a replacement. That is a real phenomenon with a specific engineering cause — and it comes with a real cost that the brochure does not mention either.
Yurii Rak · 9 min read · 9 Sept 2026
One Car Per Family Stopped Working the Day Somebody Got a Job in Abu Dhabi
Dubai has no comprehensive rail network, school runs and work start at the same hour, and the second car in most households costs less than the first one's fuel bill. The arithmetic on a second vehicle, done properly.
Yurii Rak · 7 min read · 6 Sept 2026
You Are Smart Enough Not to Pay Cash for a Car You Drive on Saturdays
A Lamborghini Urus in our fleet is AED 785,000. You will use it perhaps thirty days a year. The question is not whether you can afford it — it is whether three quarters of a million dirhams sitting in a garage is the best job that money could be doing.
Sergey Pavliuk · 8 min read · 3 Sept 2026
Defender OCTA vs G 63: Two Very Different Answers to the Same Showing-Off
One is a rally raid car with leather. The other is a forty-year-old military silhouette with 850 Nm underneath it. Both cost more than a villa deposit — and in the actual desert, the car that would beat them both is parked outside a school in Mirdif.
Yurii Rak · 8 min read · 31 Aug 2026
GCC Spec: What Is Actually Different, and What Is Just Repeated
Every article on this subject tells you GCC cars have bigger radiators. Almost none of them can show you where that is documented. Here is the honest split — the differences you can verify on paper, and the ones that are folklore with a grain of truth in them.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 28 Aug 2026
Rebuilt Does Not Mean Repaired
A salvage title means an insurer decided the car was not worth fixing. A rebuilt title means somebody fixed it anyway and a state inspector agreed it could be driven. Neither tells you what was actually damaged — and one category of damage keeps costing money for years.
Serhii Orobchenko · 9 min read · 25 Aug 2026
The Country Where Diesel Costs More Than Petrol
Diesel is AED 3.80 a litre in the UAE and Special 95 is AED 3.49. That inversion removes the entire economic case before you reach the engineering — and the engineering has its own problem with Dubai traffic.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 22 Aug 2026
Your Car Payment Is Not Your Cost: What Driving in Dubai Actually Costs a Month
Fuel, Salik, Parkin and fines arrive every month regardless of who financed the car. Priced with current official figures, with the arithmetic shown — around AED 1,090 before any payment at all.
Sergey Pavliuk · 6 min read · 19 Aug 2026
What the RTA Tester Is Actually Looking At
Every checklist tells you to clean your car and check your lights. Almost none explain what the tester is measuring, why each item is on the list, or why the most common failure in this country is one you cannot see at all.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 16 Aug 2026
Four Roads Worth the Drive, and the One Thing That Ruins Them
Jebel Jais climbs the highest mountain in the country on what feels like a racing circuit. Jebel Hafeet has more than sixty turns in about eleven kilometres. Both are tarmac, both are free, and both will cook your brakes on the way down if nobody has told you how to descend.
Yurii Rak · 8 min read · 13 Aug 2026
Choose the Week, Not the Car
Most people pick a car by class and then discover it does not fit their life. Work the other way round: describe an ordinary week honestly, and the car is usually obvious — with real prices from our fleet at every level.
Yurii Rak · 9 min read · 13 Aug 2026
The Cheapest Import Is the One Somebody Else Paid For
Since February 2024, INTERPOL has flagged more than 200 stolen Canadian vehicles worldwide every week, and the Middle East is a main destination. What that means for anyone buying a used import in the UAE, and the three checks that settle it before money moves.
Serhii Orobchenko · 6 min read · 13 Aug 2026
Deep Tread, Illegal Tyre: The Two Things UAE Heat Counts on a Calendar
A tyre in the UAE has a legal maximum age of five years from manufacture, checked at the annual test alongside tread. Batteries work the same way. Neither shows up on your odometer, and both are readable in five seconds.
Serhii Orobchenko · 7 min read · 13 Aug 2026
The Dunes Are Forty Minutes Away: A First-Timer’s Guide to Desert Driving in the UAE
Tyre pressures by terrain, the kit that actually matters, the mistake that buries a car, and the insurance clause almost nobody checks. Written by a leasing company that does not permit off-road use on its own cars — so this is advice rather than an advert.
Yurii Rak · 9 min read · 13 Aug 2026
Your Car’s Air Conditioning Works More Hours Than the Engine
Almost everything drivers call "time to top up the gas" is not about refrigerant at all. What a UAE summer actually does to an A/C system, why the symptom is rarely the cause, and the four things that keep it alive.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 13 Aug 2026
Why Engines Fail Early in the UAE — and What the Odometer Never Counts
Two identical engines, the same mileage, two different states on the ramp. Heat, engine-hours and dust do the damage, and none of them appear on the odometer. Sourced from Nissan, Mercedes and Porsche service documents.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 13 Aug 2026
The Rules We Put on the Website Instead of in Clause 14
What you may and may not do with a leased car in the UAE — desert, track, trailers, crossing into Oman, mileage — with the reason behind each one. Most of them are not our preference. They are the insurance policy and the fact that the car is registered to us.
Sergey Pavliuk · 11 min read · 13 Aug 2026
You Are Away for Two Months. The Car Is Not.
Half of Dubai leaves for the summer and most of them park the car, lock it and hope. Heat, a parasitic drain and a set of tyres carrying 2,000 kg on four small patches of rubber do not pause for your holiday.
Serhii Orobchenko · 8 min read · 13 Aug 2026
How these are written
Every checkable figure is verified against a primary source — a manufacturer service booklet, an RTA requirement, an environment agency report, the official monthly fuel price. Where the source says roughly, the article says roughly.
And where the truth argues against us, it is still written down: leasing loses to one car kept for eight years; a second car doing a couple of hundred kilometres a month does not pay for itself; Land Rover has a reliability reputation for a reason. A piece that tells you only the flattering half is useless for a decision worth tens of thousands of dirhams.