You may recall this car from the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, it’s the Gazal1 (or Ghazal?) SUV which has been designed and developed inside Saudi Arabia by students of King Saud university, with a bit of help from a couple of European companies. And now this concept has become reality as King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz officially unveiled the first production model during a ceremony in Jeddah.
The Gazal1 is 4.8-metre long and 1.9-metre and is inspired by the Arab’s favourite SUV, the G-calss Mercedes, and uses the same sort of chassis and powertrain and 4-wheel-drive.
But they have restyled the boxy shape of the G-calss in a way to represent their traditional forms derived from their buildings and stuff. And they managed to pull it off, you look at this car and you can say it’s Arabic. The thing is only Arabs will think this is a beautiful car! To the rest of the world it might seem a bit unpleasant.
President of King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh Dr Abdullah Al Othman, commented: “This is a turning point in the path of the kingdom towards becoming a car-manufacturing country similar to other industrialised nations of the world,”. He also told the King that the project needs 400 million euros to produce 20,000 Gazals over the next three years!
aslamoalaikum.
i am a paki living in saudi arabia and i am happy tht at last they made a car and it may not be very expensive also the shape of the car very much looks like toyota fjcruiser.
Great. A piece of shit from the middle east.
I am a Saudi and I don’t like this style at all. I believe it was mainly a team of males who like going out to the desert – quite fun – and would need such a car. Maybe that’s why its called Ghazal as it can ‘swing and swim into the sand’.
There was another model done by students from King Fahad for Petroleum and Minerals 15 years ago, but unfortunately manufacturing cars was not a priority.
I expect to this industry huge success because the row materials are supplied by SABIC (world 10 petrochemical producer) and low skilled- less paid workers are available well as highly skilled experts would be interested in having high wages with Zero income tax. Adding to this a strong market for such a car (used by families as well) competition of business and prestige will just boost! It might be just another race between wealthy guys after they are bored with building a higher skyscraper.
Best of luck to Ghazal!