THE WORK OF ISSA SALEM

Every Ramadan brings us together and for the @flat.12 community, it’s over a shared passion of Motorsport and connecting with other like-minded people while basking in a gorgeous sunset right around iftar. Here’s our favorite bits of the grande finale Ramadan drive from last weekend. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.

And the best part is that each and every single one likely is to have a great story behind it. We hope you enjoy our highlights of the @customshowemirates as much as we did creating them. Visit our website www.themotormag.com for more stories like this and follow us on Instagram, @the.motormag.

If you've ever been to a track day down as Yas Marina Abu Dhabi, you'll know they can be a lot of things, namely loud and boisterous with engines revving and sputtering exhaust flames with a captivating smell of fuel in the air. Last Friday's track day at the Yas Marina Circuit was very spirited, however, absent of any noisy straight-piped racing exhausts or rich racing fuel scent. And that's because it was an electric vehicle track day, perhaps the first of its kind ever. Check out the full story on themotormag.com.

A 8,600 lbs car and agility are unlikely accomplices, but 30 year-old Emirati, Ahmed Yacoub, certainly defied our laws of physics with his 2009 Chevrolet Suburban when it was gliding in between sand dunes at 140 km/h, as we tried to keep up from the paved road right beside the desert.

If 30-year old Ahmed Abdel Raouf could choose just one dream car to be his, it would be the Toyota Land Cruiser, namely the 80-series model from the 90's that was with him throughout his childhood. "This beautiful car played a major role in my childhood, so it saddened me a lot when my father sold it," Ahmed says. "We could've kept it as a sweet memory at least but my father had the final say. So, when I got older and it came back to the UAE, I knew I had to get this car again. It was one of my dreams, and I made it happen, thanks to God," he adds.

The connection between motorsport and the arts if often overlooked, but at the 2021 Custom Show Emirates, we came across someone that exemplifies using custom and handmade craftsmanship to beautify the roads, namely through custom motorcycle accessories. Meet Ute Jaeckel the professional leather carver from Hamburg, Germany and founder of Buckanear Design, her own company she has been running herself every day for the past 31 years since she started it in 1990.

“It’s equivalent to a canvas and I use the car as a canvas to paint who I am as a person,” expressed Issa Salem, a car lover since the age of 8. His love for cars from a young age was heavily influenced by the rich car culture in Abu Dhabi, which is also home to some of the most novel collections, namely that of Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, which was a part of the Guinness World Records.

Get to know the story behind building this unique beast on this short documentary episode with Dubai-based owner and builder, Raymond Khambatta.