VQ Riders zip through streets

A version of this article appeared in the web edition of The Daily Star on August 10, 2019.

DBAYEH, Lebanon: As night falls over Dbayeh’s marina, Leila Nasrallah coordinates the parking of 14 Nissan and Infiniti sports cars. The sleek vehicles twist into their designated spots while Nasrallah takes a sip from her can of Red Bull and shouts “Yalla, guys! Hurry up!”

In October Nasrallah, by day a 25-year-old medical research assistant at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, began a small community for sports car enthusiasts called VQ Riders Lebanon. Those who want to join must meet only one requirement: You have to own a sports car with a V-6 Nissan engine.

The members range in age from 20 to 37 and include drivers from other parts of the Middle East. However, the 15 members based in the country meet about twice a week to drift in underground parking lots, race at Costa Brava and exchange tips about fixing or modifying their cars along Dbayeh’s marina.

Each driver in the community has a nickname. Nasrallah goes by “Letty,” the character played by Michelle Rodriguez in the “Need for Speed” film series.

The only female in the VQ Riders group, she is often the person the other riders turn to, not only because she is its founder but because of her extensive knowledge about and ardent passion for cars.

Nasrallah’s interest in cars, she said, began when she was 13.

“My brother taught me how to drive since my feet reached the pedals,” Nasrallah told The Daily Star. “I can still remember an old orange Subaru - it was my dream car.”

She now shares her passion for asphalt-tearing drifts, burnouts and backfires with the group of people she calls family.

Nasrallah’s right hand, Rami Hanbali, a 25-year-old restaurant manager known among the riders as “Al-Hanbali,” is always there to help her organize events and meetups.

“I always had a passion for cars. It’s something about the thrill of driving, smoking tires. It’s an experience that gets your mind off everyday stress and problems,” Hanbali said. For him the meetings are an important part of the week, a time to talk about car events or simply enjoy the company of people who share his interests.

“You run into a problem or you want a specific part you can’t find - they are always going to help. If your car breaks down, everyone helps. We are like a little family,” Hanbali said.

“It’s about people - where we go, what we do. We consider ourselves family,” Mohammad Sinno, nicknamed “Sinno Airlines” because his car is “as fast as a plane,” told The Daily Star.

Sinno said that since buying his first VQ engine sports car a year ago, he’s invested a lot in modifying it. He remapped the engine, added side skirts and overhauled the exhaust.

The fastest driver of the group, the members say, is Wael Farhat. Nicknamed “Hoonnigan,” the 25-year-old physiotherapist comes to the meetings to drift, race and have fun with his close friends.

He has also done a number of “mods” to his special edition Infiniti, one of only three in Lebanon.

Carl Hokayem has been enchanted by the world of cars since a young age. A car photographer known as “K8,” he entered the VQ community through Nasrallah.

“Everything in my life is related to cars, like pretty much everyone here,” Hokayem said.

He paid for his car by photographing other cars, and he’s now the proud owner of a magenta VQ-engine Nissan he calls “Eggplant.”

Hokayem told The Daily Star that he worked and invested a lot to make it faster and better looking, which he said was his main objective as a photographer.

He said he believed car events were a great opportunity to meet people, adding that 95 percent of his friends are “car guys and girls,” and that he was lucky to find his better half through this common passion.

When Hokayem met Rana Bsaibes for the first time, his car had broken down. Luckily, she had her scanner on her, and offered to identify the problem.

“In that moment I fell in love,” Hokayem said.

Besides being a car enthusiast like her boyfriend, Bsaibes is a chemistry teacher devoted to learning mechanics. “The moment I got my car at 18, I always went to the garage, and I fixed it myself. I learned everything about mechanics by myself,” she said. “She even fixes my car too,” Hokayem said.

For Bsaibes, fixing cars is a “healing process” that she enjoys and wants to transform into a long-term career once she’s managed to save enough to open her own garage.

Recently she gifted her partner side louvers with her initials and his nickname, K8, designed into a dopamine molecule add-on.

Bsaibes does not own a car with a VQ Nissan engine and therefore cannot officially belong to the Riders club.

But she aspires to own one someday and officially become part of the community she already frequents.

In the meantime, she helps the others with advice about how to fix and modify their cars.

Everything in 20-year-old Omar Sidani’s life revolves around cars.

Known as “Vin Diesel” in the community, he also realizes that his fixation on the thrill of driving has its downsides.

“It’s a beautiful lifestyle, but it has its own consequences,” he said, referring specifically to the fines and tickets VQ Riders often get.

Most members have had problems with law enforcement, with speeding tickets and traffic violations piling up on a regular basis.

Hanbali told The Daily Star that “the past week has been wild,” because of problems they ran into at an event organized by Nasrallah.

Road safety organization YASA has posted a video from the event, accusing one of the members of the community of endangering public safety. “We weren’t doing something dangerous; it was a closed event, and we had a license for it,” Hanbali claimed.

While this hasn’t been the first issue they’ve encountered, the members thought it was the most serious one yet.

The VQ Riders are a close-knit community based on trust, support and shared passion for sports cars.

They want to keep their activities informal, Nasrallah explained.

That’s what they like - a space where they can live out their passion for cars among like-minded people.