American Vehicles in the Middle East

I do not have a choice in the vehicle that I drive. The company I work for gives me a key and says, this is the vehicle you are going to drive. No input from us workers who actually are here, driving these vehicles. For some reason, our lovely ME administrator (I will try to be nice when discussing our admin but it will be difficult) finally got around to changing out our ford focus death traps to small suvs last year that I guess was suppose to have happened years before. We have now been driving ford escapes since ?? June or July or last year. We drive a lot. We drive them hard. We drive thru pretty damn hot weather. Everyone I talk to, says american cars are not built for the middle east and will not hold up.

Our escapes are coming up on around 70,000 km and it seems.... they were right :( 

All of them kind of 'catch' when changing through the gears now. And 'our' vehicle (the one I car share and drive the most) wouldnt come out of first gear yesterday. The brought a replacement and it is in for service. I anxiously await news on her... especially because I just got her tinted not a few weeks ago.

You do not see vehicles that are over 100,000 km here often. Everyone says once they reach that, they are throw away cars???? Which is crazy to me. My dodge truck and my vw GTI in the usa both have well over 130,000 MILES on them. So like three times the amount of km that this escape has. They were driven a lot, hard, and in pretty damn hot weather too. Only difference is no sand flying around in the air. Is it the sand that wreaks havoc on vehicles here???

The vehicle of choice in the middle east is the toyota (well once you get past the uppidy locals who want BMWs, Jaguars, Mercedes, Range Rovers, etc). Are american cars really just not up to par for the middle east?

I feel like this blog is all over but my mind seems to be all over lately. And even though this is off subject, I would like to apologize for not sticking with and blogging regularly about my adventures. I have been doing quite a bit lately and really should have been blogging and reflecting on these things. I will do better in the future.