Brown Car Guy

'Brown Car Guy & Buddies' - Catching up with Chandan Basu Mallik in Calcutta, India -  I knew him in Dubai where he headed up and/or wrote for several major automotive publications during his near two decades in the Middle East, including Autocar, F1 and Wheels. As a fellow British-Asian, he beat me to his first car review by a couple of years.    Some great stories and anecdote...

'Brown Car Guy & Buddies' - Automotive media started to embrace digital platforms in the UK in the 90s, Jim Murray Jones has been at the centre of it since day one - AutoTrader, Exchange & Mart, SunMotors, Sunday Times Driving, Autocar, WhatCar?, PistonHeads and DriveTribe to name a few of the organisations he's worked at.    As he now moves into the arena of live motoring events...

How to beat the odds! Here's my story - going from the late great legendary motoring journalist, LJK Setright, to BrownCarGuy, via Car Magazine, Motoring Middle East, Parkers Price Guide website and more, including Saudi Gazette & Arab News becoming Saudi Arabia's first motoring journalist along the way. It's about highs and lows, achievements and disappointments, and the controversial underto...

'Brown Car Guy & Buddies' - Jorge Ferrari is one of the leading photographers in the UAE, but he's been based in the region as far back at 1986 in Kuwait, where he found himself caught up in the invasion by Iraq. Ever the professional, his pictures were the first seen by the world from inside occupied Kuwait as he was shooting for Reuters.    He talks about how his big escape plan fa...

Abdulla Jaafari: from Illegal Street Racing in Amman to Shooting Supercars in Dubai (+Drifting)   'Brown Car Guy & Buddies' - Abdulla Jaafari has gone from covering illegal street racing / drifting on the strees of Amman, Jordan, to shooting the Pininfarina Battista in Dubai. Plus dune drag with the Mercedes AMG G-Class 4x4 Squared - a video that's got him nearly 8 million views on YouTub...

Exclusive interview with car design legend Gordon Murray on his new supercar, the amazing T.50 from Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), the true successor to the iconic McLaren F1.  Lamenting that no one had appeared to create a true follow-up to the F1, and to mark his own 50th year in the business, Murray set out to create not only modern-day F1, but what he claims will be the definitive and la...

25072020 'Brown Car Guy & Buddies' - Tim Ansell talks about working on Syriana, Fast  & Furious 7 and Mission Impossible 4 during which he got to talk to Tom Cruise about AC Cobras.    A huge fan of Land Rovers, he started rallying in the Desert Challenge as a co-driver until a crash broke his back, so he took up photography, shooting cars, planes and motorsports, as well as...

18072020 'Brown Car Guy & Buddies'   Muscle Car Mitch Perera, is known for V8 muscle cars, feasome off-road trucks, building cool custom cars, being a SEMA veteran and his love of the great outdoors. But after all these decades in the UAE, has the sun finally got to him as he talks Electric Vehicles?! Plus is he the only person on the planet that doesn't like the new Ford Bronco?  &n...

Watch at https://youtu.be/Zq1ZNyy_hcY From deck hand to car journalist to Rolls-Royce PR to a career with GM - but not a Lebanese rally driver, definitely NOT a Lebanese rally driver - meet Ronald Balit!  Ronald Balit hails from the land of the cedars, lebanon, fabled for its snowy mountain caps, gushing rivers and Mediterranean coast, its winding mountain roads, deep valleys,  and........

The Amazing Journey from selling old mags in India to PR for FCA in Dubai   In this episode I chat to my good buddy, Neville Darukhanawalla. A self-confessed automotive buff, Neville Jal Darukhanawalla has been associated with cars and bikes since his school days in the late 1980s. A two-time national champion, racing scooters in his native India, he has raced in different forms of motorcycle...

In this episode I chat to one of America's most well-know senior motoring journalists/car content creators, MotorTrend's Jonny Lieberman - you'll know him from his work on the mag but also videos like Ignition, Head 2 Head, Best Driver’s Car, and the World’s Greatest Drag Race videos on YouTube and Motor Trend on Demand (links below).    Jonny Lieberman has been MotorTrend’s senior featu...

'Brown Car Guy & Buddies'  - Meet Filippa Guarna, who at one point was directing and producing all our commercial videos at Motoring Middle East in Dubai (links to some of those below).   In fact she's also been a radio and print journalist, has worked with motor racing teams, is a Knight Rider fan, owns her grandad's classic Holden and is a full-on car girl! She's also running...

Meet Bakur Azher of Saudi Auto, he is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's most senior and established motoring journalist. His journey started through a love affair with a Jaguar E-Type and subsequently starting the country's first dedicated automotive publication.    He's seen a lot of change and development over the near three decades since, including an evolution of the carscape and the kin...

John (Yahya) Gardiner, Ford Comms Director: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations  'Brown Car Guy & Buddies'  In this episode I speak to John Gardiner who has been at Ford Motor Company for 30 years and currently has two jobs - Executive Director, Communications & Public Affairs, Ford of Britain & Ireland, and Corporate Communications, Ford of Europe.   As well as...

Kicking off a new series with Imthishan Giado of Motoring Middle East, in which we decide if you should buy a certain car. If the two of us both agree we'd buy it, you get the green light!    Like this? Then check this out  https://amzn.to/3hkTPnf   https://amzn.to/30DUryn   Here we shoot for dream car you won't believe is real. But it exists, and I should know - I saw the...

When I moved to Dubai in 2006 as editor of Car Middle East, Damien Reid was editor of Autocar Middle East, but from fierce professional rivalry emerged a fast personal friendship. It's great to catch up with one of the most respected and prolific car journalists in the Middle East, to hear some great behind-the-scenes stories of what really want on with PR, car manufacturers and magazine publishin...

Great to catch up with the all-action Wonder Woman of motoring in the UAE - Alix Capper Murdoch Atkinson. She's in the military, she does stunt driving, she races cars and bikes, she's a radio DJ, has done TV and live shows (with me) and raises loads of cats. She also manages to name drop quite a bit in this video from her time in Dubai from Kanye West and Kim Kardashian to Jackie Chan and working...

Hilarious chat with former Dubai Eye radio host, Podcaster/YouTuber and full-time university lecturer - the Jeep-driving, Hawaiian-shirt wearing, irrepressibly energetic Canadian - Prof James Piecowye.     We catch up on doing six years of the CarTalk one-hour weekly radio show on Dubai's top talk-radio channel, why I love Honda's, why he won't buy a new Jeep, how I got into motorin...

In this episode I answer questions you've asked about the air suspensionn on a Porsche Macan, the quality of Japanese cars, whether to get an Abarth 595, choosing between an Audi S3 and BMW 4 Series, the best car for a newby driver, if 90s BMW saloons would work as daily drivers, essential difference between petrol, diesel, eletric and hybrid and the Alfa Romeo Stelvio.  Alfa Romeo Stelvio Qu...

Another episode in which I catch up with a friend - but this one is different. Farrukh Ahmed, based in the UAE, is himself a podcaster - check out FarrukhTalks! So he took the lead on this one, and turned the spotlight on me! We covered more of my journey as a Brown Car Guy and the obstacles in the career path I obstinately choose, plus overcoming shyness and advice for those looking to follow in...

In the latest in my series where I catch up with friends and colleagues from around the world, I chat to Ian Cox who's been in the United Arab Emirates for over a decade and is a man of many talents - a DJ, Quiz host, Karaoke entertainer, and pro-driver involved with track days and car manufacturer drive events on road and track for VIPs, tourists and of course the media.    There's some...

In this video I catch up with PR professional, good friend and supporter Tom Conway-Gordon. Having worked both in the UK and Dubai, I got to know Tom from the Chevrolet Camaro launch a decade ago. He worked on the huge General Motors Middle East account and also on the very important Daimler Mercedes-Benz account for the region.    We reminisce about car launches, me being that pain-in-t...

Kevin Haggarthy is a pioneer of motoring journalism in the UK: the first black motoring journalist, a motor industry consultant, race and high performance driving instructor, serial classic-car owner and a presenter of the Pulling Power car show on TV in the early 2000s.   I've known him since the late 90s and have worked with him on Used Car Buyer magazine, and am presently collaborating wit...

This is the time to buy your dream car says James Ruppert! He is the man that created the term Bangernomics - and comic book series about a 70s action hero (Spencer Haze) transporter to present day (which was allegedly modelled on me).    A veteran car journalist who's extensively written on the new and used car market and authored several books on the subject, researched for TV shows an...

Continuing the series - 'BrownCarGuy & Buddies' in this episode I chat with Fraser Martin - a Scotsman who's lived in the Gulf for over four decades and has been involved in just about every aspect of automotive and motoring in the Middle East, from instructing, to testing, to car development and motoring journalism.    Here he talks about that time he had to drive Mohammed Ben Sulay...