In a bid to offer more information to regional car buyers than ever before, DriveArabia.com has been heavily revamped with all-new sections. Already the first automotive website in the Middle East region to introduce a professional auto blog, the first online price guide, and the first to offer tightly-edited original video clips, DriveArabia.com is set to revolutionise the GCC auto market, with an upgraded car-buyer guide section that includes long-term reliability and resale value ratings for all car models.

Dubbed the Ultimate Car Buyer Guide, the new section now offers data on new as well as older cars, to help buyers of both new and pre-owned vehicles. Cars older than three years include reliability and resale value star-ratings, as well as a complete list of common problems that owners have experienced. Even buyers of new cars can use the historical ratings to determine the future reliability and resale value of various brands. With listings for engine specs, performance data and fuel economy ratings for every car and 4WD sold in GCC showrooms, the new guide is quite possibly the most comprehensive automotive resource ever created for this region.

“I personally researched, edited and entered the data for each and every listed vehicle, to maintain a certain degree of uniformity in the ratings. It took about three months of intense work to detail as many as 300 new and some 50 used models. The next step is to add data on more used cars,” said Editor-in-Chief Mashfique H. Chowdhury. “Even the pages were completely designed and customised by me, with back-end programming graciously done by Sharjah-based web-design firm AQLWorld.com for free, as we continue to run on a non-profit basis with minimal sponsorships so far. Thanks to our low running costs, money has never been an issue.”

New additions to the website alongside the upgraded buyer guide include a new feature to compare car specs side-by-side, as well as a new homepage, a letters-to-the-editor section, a revamped future-preview segment, and a new classifieds section. Even more sections are in the pipeline.

Response to the new features has been overwhelming. “The new features were soft-launched on June 22, and within three days, our daily page-views have doubled,” said Diego Martins, PR & Marketing Manager. “We won’t go around making empty claims about being the leading automotive resource around. Instead, we do our thing and let the people decide what they want to read. We already know we have an influence on what people buy, as witnessed in our letters section, and we will continue our consumer-driven approach rather than get side-tracked by revenue targets or corporate pandering.”

DriveArabia.com continues to experience unprecedented growth, more than doubling visitor numbers since last summer. The growth in traffic is being attributed largely to word-of-mouth and search engines, with more than 75% of all visitors coming from GCC countries.

DriveArabia.com has entered into a deal with MSN Arabia to provide automotive content for Microsoft's MSN Arabia's auto channel.

DriveArabia.com, which has become the leading website of its kind in the Middle East in few short years, will edit and share automotive news and stories that will be of interest to readers of MSN Arabia. The MSN Arabia portal, which boasts 5 million users, is maintained by Egypt's LINKDotNET.

'We are growing at a steady pace thanks to our unique content and regular updated features, so any additional exposure that MSN Arabia could provide us among their large user base will be beneficial to us,' said Mashfique Hussain Chowdhury, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the DriveArabia.com website.

DriveArabia.com, having just completed its third year of operation, continues to experience unprecedented growth, thanks to unique features such as its exclusive new car buyer guide, up-to-the-minute automotive blog, exciting original video clips, critical reviews, and commentary on future car releases.

Already the first automotive website in the Middle East region to introduce a professional automotive blog, as well as first online car price guide of its kind, DriveArabia.com has another regional first as it officially introduces its first round of video content featuring exciting test drive excerpts.

“We wanted to show people what we actually do with the cars to lend our reviews more credibility, though our videos will feature only the most fun bits,” said Editor-in-Chief Mashfique H. Chowdhury. “We believe we are first to introduce such tightly-edited action video clips in this regional segment.”

The video clips available on the DriveArabia.com website utilise Yahoo’s JumpCut internet video technology, and require only a Flash plug-in to run. A solitary video clip had already been online since October of last year to gauge interest, but without any sort of promotion. The video clip still managed to garner a good number of views simply through word of mouth. The video offerings have now been expanded to two releases, each only 2 minutes long, with more to follow in the coming months. All videos feature largely amateur camerawork, a non-existent budget and a thumping soundtrack in the background.

The videos show only a section of brief extreme driving trials that some test cars endure, enough to get accurate data about a vehicle’s character, but hardly done long enough to damage or wear out a car. “We do our drives in isolated or closed areas, with no other people around, so as to conduct our runs in a safe environment,” commented Diago Martins, Head of PR & Marketing. “While some may consider these videos as promoting rash driving, they are no more influential on the general public than traditional motorsports or typical action movies.”

DriveArabia.com continues to experience unprecedented growth, tripling visitor numbers since last summer. The growth in traffic is being attributed mostly to word-of-mouth and search engines, with most new visitors coming from the Emirates and surrounding countries.