RIP Top Gear, it was fantastic while it lasted
"Johnny-never-heard-of-you-before" announced as next Top Gear host. Whoopee
Some radio talk show host has been given the job and a 3 year contract by BBC. Is talent really in that short a supply? They get a career radio voice and failure at TV to be on the highest rated TV show of all time?
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/06/16/chris-evans-top-gear-host/
After his success in the 1990s, Evans' attempts at a TV comeback in the 21st century have been mixed with a record of poor ratings and cancellations, including falling viewing figures for his recent role as co-host of Friday editions of The One Show.
Following two high-profile shows which failed to perform in the ratings, UMTV hired Terry Wogan and Evans' former Big Breakfast co-host Gaby Roslin to host a weekday morning magazine show, The Terry and Gaby Show. Evans said publicly that if this show failed he would set up a market stall. Despite critical acclaim the audience numbers never took off and Channel 5 axed the show after its year-long run, citing its high cost as a reason.
OFI Sunday was cancelled after just five shows following poor reviews and low viewing figures. Its cancellation led Evans to complain on air during his Saturday BBC Radio 2 slot that he no longer knew how to be successful on television.
In February 2011, it was reported that the show Famous and Fearless had been axed after one series due to poor ratings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Evans_(presenter)
Of course, the BBC has never had much success in television, they've rarely had any show survive the 1st season according to British actors
Here's hoping Clarkson, May and Hammond soon announce that they will have a new show and give me something to look forward to, as I won't be looking at this boffer's version of Top Gear. Hell, I hope the Stig quits Top gear too
Top Gear hosts update
Currently filming content for their live arena events, they've also met with ITV and Netflix. So far, no one has facts on what they'll be doing this fall, but it seems clear it's going to be all three working together on a show similar to what Top Gear was, but without the BBC having any say in the content, and without censorship. Which is what fans want.
The Lad Bible's article says the BBC offered Hammond and May 4 million if they would stay with Top Gear. Offer denied. http://www.theladbible.com/articles/hammond-and-may-to-reject-huge-bbc-offer-to-start-new-netflix-show-with-clarkson
The Mirror took a gallery of photos, but didn't get an interview. http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/jeremy-clarkson-james-richard-hammond-5662506
The Jeremy Clarkson debacle is what Top Gear needed
THIS IS a wonderful time for Top Gear.
Over the past few weeks it’s almost been impossible to visit the loo without someone venturing an opinion on what Jeremy Clarkson did or didn’t do in a North Yorkshire hotel, which is why – until now – I've refrained from weighing in with mine.
Watching the whole Jeremy Clarkson thing unfold has been like watching – perhaps aptly – a car crash in slow motion, made all the worse by the fact I’ve grown up alongside his televisual career. So standing on the edge of the huge abyss his sacking has ripped through the motoring landscape has been like seeing a close relative getting nicked.
It's made worse - especially for the BBC - by the fact there is no clear cut answer. As at least one Champion colleague pointed out, to defend Jeremy would be to defend someone who punches a colleague at work. To agree with casting out would be to disagree with Top Gear's army of fans and to rob the Beeb of one of its biggest stars.
The Corporation has made the only call it realistically could, but it's a sorry end for Jeremy's long career there, A career that not only included some brilliant Top Gear moments, but the wonderfully nostalgic Clarkson's Car Years, the tongue-in-cheek Jeremy Clarkson Meets The Neighbours and the passionate case he made for Brunel to be recognised as Britain's greatest person.
Jeremy looks back at the Lamborghini Countach in Clarkson's Car Years back in 2000
I spent my childhood watching the fuzzy-haired progenitor of dodgy faded denim carefully crafting his metaphors on Motorworld. I laughed when his description of how the Ford Probe was so good looking it could snap knicker elastic earned him a mention on Points of View, and yes, I remember the ripples of derision his televised destruction of the Vauxhall Vectra sent through the motoring world back in 1995. Clarkson, both back in the Nineties when I got hooked on Top Gear and in his mega successful Noughties incarnation, is still compulsive viewing.
Yet everyone who loves Top Gear – and that includes you – will be just fine, because the show’s now been forced into the rethink nobody was prepared to admit it needed.
Top Gear of right now reminds me of Roger Moore donning a space suit in Moonraker – it was brilliant in parts, but proof positive that bigger budget doesn’t always bring better results. Stung by the criticism of a Bond film that tried – and failed – to mimic Star Wars, the producers went back to basics and came back two years later with the excellent For Your Eyes Only.
The BBC – as Doctor Who, Have I Got News For You and, erm, a 2002 series called Top Gear prove – is brilliant at rescuing hit shows from the brink and making them brilliant again. As much as it hurts to admit it, Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear are not one and the same. Now is the opportunity to reboot it and get back to the basics of the show. The cars.
Jeremy's infamous 1995 Top Gear road test of the Vauxhall Vectra
For all the punches, BBC inquiries, sackings, death threats, wild speculation and newspaper columnists seriously suggesting Piers Morgan should be at the helm of the word’s biggest motoring show despite having no experience of car reviewing, everyone will be fine.
Jeremy will be fine because he’ll either retire and enjoy the contents of his garage or find an equally lucrative job. Top Gear will be fine because the Beeb’s best brains are already onto the job, and you’ll be fine because in the long run you’re not going to deprived of motoring telly.
In fact, the only people who lose are The Daily Mail because they’ll have lost something to irritate the public about. Result!
In response to yet another Top Gear controversy...
ALL anyone wants to know at the moment is what I think about Top Gear.
It’s been brought up by people tapping my shoulder at the bar and my mobile’s been beeping away incessantly with Facebook and Twitter chatter on the matter. Rightly so, people want to know what The Champion’s motoring correspondent makes of one of the most controversial moments of the biggest motoring show the world has ever seen.
Yep, you’ve sussed it. Why does Mr Simister drive a Peugeot?
You might have seen the clip in question. A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy Clarkson and James May took a sideswipe at the Peugeot-driving masses, and – via several crashes in a garden centre car park – insisted they should be given a wide berth on Britain’s roads. As a result, quite a few of my fellow petrolheads have poked merciless fun at me because I’ve got one.
Regular readers will probably know the Pug in question – it’s a bottom-of-the-range diesel 306, which I picked up back in November as a workhorse to entrust all the mucky motorway jobs with. I bought it primarily because it cost less than what some of my mates spend on shirts, but there’s another thing I’ve come to really love about it. It’s something applicable to all old Peugeots, and you have to go somewhere really remote to appreciate it.
Aberdeen, for instance. I was up there the other day in a borrowed Astra, and connecting the airport and the final destination of a business trip were some utterly astonishing roads. Quiet, twisty roads that threaded their way for mile after beautiful mile over the desolate Scottish moors, and yet the brand new Vauxhall felt a bit underwhelming tackling them. It was safe, comfortable and thoroughly competent, but the hint of dynamic sparkle I crave on all the cars I love was nowhere to be seen. It was the sort of disappointment that’d make some people want to punch a colleague in the face out of sheer frustration.
Yet my 15-year-old Peugeot, I discovered on not entirely dissimilar roads in Yorkshire the following day, has that sparkle in spades. Look back at motoring mags from its day and you’ll see road testers raving about the 306 GTi-6, but peel away the hot hatch garnishings and you’ll find all 306s, even bottom-of-the-range diesel ones, ride and handle beautifully. The steering talks to you. You get the sort of mid-corner updates most modern day hatchbacks would you rather you didn’t have. It’s something all old Peugeots, from the 205 GTi to the 406 estate, revel in.
Jeremy and James made that exact point eloquently before moving on to the comedy car crashes, but the message which seems to have been picked up by the wider populace is that all Peugeots are terrible to drive and commandeered by people who have a predilection for light crashes.
Old Peugeots can still deliver a real punch. Which, for reasons I’m still not sure of, seems weirdly topical.
The Classic Car Show is no Top Gear, but that doesn't stop me liking it
TOP GEAR is back on form. It seems that no matter how much the tabloids knock its presenters for offending everyone from here to Argentina, the show keeps gorging itself on spinach and coming back even stronger.
Even though it’s been years since it’s done a properly down-to-Earth, sensible set of wheels you really can’t fault it for entertaining motoring telly. I laughed like a drain when Richard Hammond’s ambulance used a pressurised gas cannon to fire a patient through the window of a makeshift hospital, and the race across St Petersburg between a Renault Twizy, a bike, a hovercraft and a Stig was genuinely exciting stuff.
But Top Gear keeping on the edge of your sofa in an occasionally offensively entertaining way is nothing new. All anyone has wanted to ask me this week is what I think of The Classic Car Show.
Chances are – if the petrolhead consensus I’ve been following is anything to go by – you’ll have reached one of two conclusions having watched the opening episode. Either you’ll have been switched off entirely by its unashamedly upmarket, glossy take on the world of old cars and vowed never to watch it again. Or you’ve already committed to watching all 13 episodes because a) it’s motoring telly and you’d rather watch it than Emmerdale, and more importantly b) because it has its moments of brilliance. I’m in the latter camp.
There have been things about The Classic Car Show that made my mind melt slightly – there will, for instance, be a special place reserved at the back of my mind alongside Katie Hopkins and failed 2006 rom-com You, Me and Dupree for the vapid awfulness of the piece which asked Tinie Tempah for his opinion on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. Quentin Willson, however, tackled the Mustang’s 50th anniversary with genuine clout and authority, and the pieces on the £5000 classic cars – TR7, XJ-S and so on – have been packed with warmth and nostalgia.
In fact, I actually admire The Classic Car Show for daring to do something different. Unless you want Top Gear or a show about two blokes buying an old car, restoring it and flogging it on – and after the success of Wheeler Dealers, they’re ten a penny – there hasn’t really been much for people into cars to choose from.
Regular readers will know I've pleaded with TV’s powers that be for a proper, magazine-format show about cars which is filled with fun and facts in roughly equal measure – the sort of thing Top Gear and Driven used to do when they had to make reviewing the Vauxhall Vectra look interesting. This isn't it, but I like it because it's a fresh take on a subject car nuts love.
The Classic Car Show isn't perfect, but it’s won a slot in my Thursday evenings.
James May's Cars of the People was great motoring TV
IT WAS somewhere in the North Sea where I discovered one of motoring telly’s genuine surprises last night.
Chances are that if I hadn’t have been stuck on a ferry tossing and turning through the waves on my way back from a trip to Holland and Germany, I wouldn’t have flicked on the TV and started watching James May’s newly-launched BBC series about people’s cars. If you haven’t already seen it and fancy tracking it down on iPlayer, it’s called – in a magnificent display of Beeb imagination – James May’s Cars of the People.
Yet despite the unremarkable name, Captain Slow had me hooked; here, after what seems like months of false starts, was a spot of automotive telly I found myself genuinely enjoying. I’m sure not the only car nut who finds his other pet project – an occasional motoring show called Top Gear – has brilliant and tiresomely slapstick moments in roughly equal measure, but almost all of the other shows aimed at us petrolhead types have proven tricky viewing.
I get the impression that in a glass-sided building somewhere in Canary Wharf a boardroom’s worth of overpaid telly executives have cottoned onto the fact that classic cars are hot property, and between them opened the floodgates for a whole of slew of motoring TV shows over the past few months. We had Philip Glenister do a great job with For The Love Of Cars, but I couldn’t help wincing when an old Series One Land Rover was restored to such an eat-your-dinner-off-it level of cleanliness that it’ll never see a farm track again, and then auctioned for an eye watering £41,000. We’ve also had AC/DC rocker Brian Johnson pontificating about his favourite supercars in Cars That Rock, but the worst television call by far was whichever idiot gave Classic Car Rescue a second series.
That’s why, after a bellyful of obviously scripted motoring mishaps and shows which give off the impression all old cars are handcrafted from unobtainium, it was so refreshing to see James May talking sensibly about the cars your mum and dad used to drive. I switched off at the end of the show having learned some genuine nuggets of pub fact gold about the Fiat 124, and been reminded why the Trabant was so bad that thousands of East Germans happily headed straight towards a crooning David Hasselhoff in a simultaneous lunge for motoring freedom. In fact, the only letdown was resorting to some cheap Top Gear laughs by dropping a Lada from a helicopter for laughs, but James May’s Cars of the People had me hooked
.
Even though I’m firmly back on terra firma now, I’ll definitely be tuning in this Sunday for the next episode.
Clarkson column splits opinion
The piece, defending the Top Gear presenter over a clip which was never actually broadcast in its controversial form in the first place, has neatly divided Life On Cars readers between those who think he's some sort of automotive Ron Atkinson and those who think his apology was heartfelt and that he deserved to keep his job at the helm of the world's most-widely watched motoring show.
John Kade was one of the readers who got in touch after reading my piece in last week's Champion, and wrote:
"Firstly can I say that I found this very offensive. Does Mr Simister know Jeremy personally, his article also falls short of describing how indecent Mr Clarkson's behaviour was. It appears that Mr Simister is minimising Mr Clarkson's behaviour. How many celebrities have lost their jobs in broadcasting due to this sort of clandestine racism? After all Jeremy Clarkson is in the public eye and arena, his behaviour should reflect that."
However, I also had plenty of readers lining up to agree with the article, including fellow Champion columnist Jim Sharpe, who wrote not a letter, but an entire column of his own on the subject:
I appreciate it's a hugely sensitive subject, but it's good to see that Jeremy appears to be getting on with what he does best - filming a new series of Top Gear, which I'm really looking forward to. Whichever side of the fence you're on, however, it's clear that the whole saga has prompted some strongly-worded feedback.
Then again, that's nothing compared to the letter I had earlier today, entitled simply David Simister is an idiot and knows nothing, in which one reader questions my right to be a motoring journalist simply because I think Giorgetto Giugiaro made the Daewoo Matiz far more interesting than it could have been.
Each to their own, and all that...
Jeremy Clarkson a racist? No chance
That’s why I’m sure I can’t be the only person in Britain who felt strangely blasé when they saw THAT headline the other day. CLARKSON’S N-WORD SHAME. It just makes you want to release all that pent-up Clarkson hatred The Daily Mirror bet you’ve been bottling up for months, doesn’t it?
Or rather it would, but these days Top Gear controversies and scandals occur with such cloying regularity that they might as well be episodes of Friends. Was it The One With The Mexican Jokes which offended most? Or perhaps The One With The Staged Caravan Inferno? The One With The Lorry Driver Insults?
On each and every occasion, a tabloid newspaper demands at least one of the Top Gear trio be sacked. Then, a fortnight later, everyone’s forgotten about it and the juggernaut that is the world’s most widely watched motoring show thunders a little further up the Beeb’s ratings.
This time, however, Jeremy has apparently been given a final warning. A final warning about a word which was never actually broadcast and which only appears in a clip which the tabloids have dug up to prompt your sense of disgust. A clip which – even if you listen to it repeatedly on YouTube – features Clarkson mumbling in an outtake so slurred it wouldn’t have been useable in the final cut anyway. Anyone who actually watches Top Gear – whether they love or loathe it – will know the idea of Jeremy Clarkson being a racist is absurd.
I watched that original N-word clip when it was broadcast, heard absolutely nothing of offence whatsoever, and absorbed it with no emotion other than a slight sense of smugness through learning that TV’s Jeremy Clarkson agreed with me on how brilliant the Toyota GT-86 is. I also watched the supposedly notorious bit of the Burma special, observed that the bridge the team had cobbled together was leaning one side, and only learned how outrageously offended I should have been by reading about it on The Daily Mail’s website the following morning.
I’m not asking you to like Jeremy Clarkson – that’s a bit like asking you to vote Nigel Farage – but I am suggesting that most of the people moaning about Top Gear have no interest in it. I have no interest in The Only Way Is Essex, but I don’t spend every night watching it, looking out for things to be upset about.
Happily, there’s someone out there who’s happy to stick their head above the parapet and tell it like it is. To paraphrase the direct quote from Twitter in a way that’s printable in a family newspaper, Jeremy Clarkson is many things, including a monumental pillock, but he definitely isn’t a racist.
Thank you for being the voice of reason, James May.
Yesterday was brilliant for motoring TV
Whether you’re an F1 addict or someone who – like me - occasionally dips into motorsport’s equivalent of the Premier League, the British Grand Prix last weekend offered up some of the most gripping racing I’ve seen in ages. Bored of Wimbledon and unsure whether I’m either too cool or not quite cool enough to get into Glastonbury, I happily flicked over to Silverstone for a bit of V8-powered relief.
Naturally, being British, I wanted Lewis – who’d qualified on pole – to win. If that’d happened I’m pretty sure the Queen herself would have arrived to congratulate him, the Northamptonshire circuit would have been treated to a flypast by the Red Arrows and the nation would have breathed a collective sigh of relief after realizing we can still win at something. Unfortunately, a bit of a puncture on his Pirellis, early on into the race, left him at the back of the grid. Lewis’ loss, however, was the fans’ gain, because it was one of the tensest races I’ve seen in years.
The screamer from Stevenage didn’t manage to win, but he did succeed in getting from last to fourth, via some pretty spectacular driving, while Mark Webber came out of nowhere to snatch second. Meanwhile, in my living room, I grunted the excited squeak of a farmyard animal when Sebastian Vettel’s gearbox gave up the ghost. Frankly, I loved the whole unpredictable spectacle. Speaking of the predictable, I’d been counting down the days until that other great staple of petrolhead telly – Top Gear – romped back into the schedules later that evening, regardless of whether you love it or hate it.
For what it’s worth, I still think there’s a yawning great chasm – probably somewhere in the depths of BBC Four – for a proper, sensible TV show about all matters motoring, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy TG’s return. The more flak that gets thrown at Top Gear by Daily Mail readers, the stronger the show’s content seems to get – and Jezza, Slow and Hamster have been through the usual barrage of pre-show criticsm. That’s why I’m expecting great things from the hour I swap the driver’s seat for the sofa each Sunday night.
Car shows every other weekend, some vaguely summer-esque weather to enjoy driving for a change and Top Gear on Sunday nights to round it all off nicely. Much better than standing around in a field in Somerset waiting for Mumford and Sons, I reckon!
Top Gear - due back on your screens on January 27
There's been a bit of a Top Gear vacuum on our screens lately, most noticeably when over Christmas the TV schedules had plenty for fans of Eastenders, Downton Abbey and Miranda but not much for anyone looking for the petrolhead's usual Yuletide helping of three middle aged blokes breaking down in the middle of nowhere. To be fair, the excellent World's Most Dangerous Roads has made a bit of low key comeback but Top Gear, perhaps stung by criticism of last year's India special, was nowhere to be seen.
Until this weekend, when Auntie announced the show would be back on Sunday, January 27.
From what the official online preview suggests it looks set to be a belting season packed with the trio's usual blend of speed, seriousness, silliness and, er, Stig-ness, with a not-at-all-delayed Christmas special featuring the Aston Martin Vanquish, the Lexus L-FA and Dodge Viper on a trip to Mexico, somewhere where the show has plenty of fans.
It's not as if the trio haven't been idly doing nothing since the last series finished way back in March of last year, with Richard Hammond treating us to a rundown of James Bond's cars last October, and Jeremy Clarkson and James May bringing out the brilliantly funny Worst Car In The History of the World special on DVD, but the return of a new, full series looks set to be a bit of a treat.
Can't wait...
Happy tenth birthday* Top Gear!
MANY happy returns, Britain’s most watched motoring TV show. Many have tried to better your three-blokes-and-a-Stig format, but nobody’s really managed it.
Even though I was naive, 16-year-old college student at the time I remember that first programme of the reinvented Top Gear like it been shown yesterday rather than October 20, 2002. What I remember most of all was not being particularly bowled over by the studio, sparsely populated by members of the Subaru Owners’ Club, the tedious piece talking the viewers through their new track, and by Jason Dawe, who despite being a likeable bloke with a lot of knowledge on used cars never seemed to suit presenting the revamped show. No wonder he was quietly dropped after a single series.
But the calls by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman to give Top Gear an overhaul were well justified. Old Top Gear, as it’s now called, had slowly evolved from the dry, technical show of William Woollard’s day into a thoroughly entertaining thirty minutes of Thursday night telly. Even though I’ve always maintained it was the triple whammy of Tiff Needell’s balletic oversteer routines, Quentin Willson’s caustic commentary and Jeremy Clarkson’s genius quips, in terms of mass appeal it was Jezza who made Top Gear in the Nineties so watchable, and the drop in ratings after he pulled out in 1999 proved it. By the time the original was “rested” in 2001 it was regularly being beaten in the ratings by Channel 4’s excellent and much-missed Driven.
Top Gear of course, is a very different beast these days; three knowledgeable petrol heads with a genuine on-screen chemistry, packed-out studios with waiting lists which run into years, the enigma of the Stig and some genuinely brilliant production values and novel scripting have made it into unmissable television not just for car lovers, but their long-suffering other halves too. Admittedly, even I get annoyed when it strays into the slapstick – like that caravanning piece, for instance – but the point is it’s memorable and put together by people who have a passion for the subject.
The pieces which have made me cringe are more than outweighed by the dozens of great pieces of film-making they’ve put together. Take the Aston Martin racing the TGV across France, for instance. Or Jeremy’s poignant Senna tribute. Or any of the lovely classic car pieces James used to do (more, please!). Or my favourite Top Gear film to date – the wonderfully funny and spectacularly unsucessful efforts to buy a mid-engined supercar for less than £10,000. All pieces which highlight exactly why TG deserves its place in the primetime Sunday night slot.
What Top Gear has left though – and I’ve said it before – is a gap, a void in motoring telly where the old Top Gear, with its enforced diet of sensible reviews of superminis and used car buying guides, used to sit in the schedules. Even though Driven was dropped shortly after Top Gear’s introduction many have tried; many of the old Top Gear crew went onto Fifth Gear, which is still entertaining largely for Tiff’s reviews but has increasingly tried – and failed – to mimic the Beeb’s format. Sky’s The Petrol Age had a scholarly feel to it and a great presenter in Paul McGann, but still felt a little too inaccessible for non-petrolheads just wanted straightforward pieces on cars old and new, while Five’s latest effort, Classic Car Rescue, has been given an absolute pasting for its obviously scripted performances. Top Gear, meanwhile, has pretty much the entire population divided; everybody either loves it or hates it, but all of them, without exception, are familiar with it.
So long live Top Gear, and kudos to the first production company who comes up with the first genuinely enjoyable car show to fill the gap it left.
*Top Gear actually celebrated its tenth birthday yesterday, but what's a day between friends?
World's Most Dangerous Roads is the best bit of motoring TV in ages
CONSIDERING I'M both a car nut and a self-confessed couch potato I find most motoring telly a bit hard to chew.
I've written about Top Gear before, which is by far my favourite car show but even I admit strays from being serious silly, often in the space of a single episode. Then there's the generic rubbish - usually on ITV or BBC Four - which are all directed by someone who deems that all motoring programmes must feature Driving In My Car at least once. It's Madness. Literally.
In fact, since the original Top Gear and the delightfully innovative Channel Four show Driven went west there's been surprisingly little to get revved up about. So I'm surprised that an all-too-short series that's just finished on BBC Two had me hooked.
World's Most Dangerous Roads sounds like the sort of horridly dull show you'd find lingering in the Discovery Turbo schedules but don't let the title put you off, because it's one of the best bits of Sunday night TV I've seen in a long time. The recipe's simple but suprisingly simple; get two go-getting celebs, send them to somewhere remote with a poor road safety record, stick them in a 4x4 and dial the tension up to 11. Well researched, packed with suspense and superbly produced, I reckon it's one of the best things the Beeb's done all year.
Admittedly, the sight of 'slebs swearing at a battered Nissan Patrol was always going to appeal to me but what's surprised me is how many non-petrolheads I know were watching it too, simply because it was a truly tense bit of television. By far the best bit was watching Hugh Dennis and Ben Fogle threading their Toyota Tundra along the narrowest of Peruvian mountain passes, crawling just inches from certain death as knackered trucks thundered past the other way.
If you liked that Top Gear special in Jeremy Clarkson had a similar near miss in Bolivia, you'll love World's Most Dangerous Roads.
It's just a shame that last Sunday's episode was the last of just three episodes, because this series was one that definitely deserved a longer run.
My advice? Catch it on iPlayer while you still can.
Top Gear E Type video
Surely one of the best Top Gear segments ever.
Currywurst and cars, but no Clarkson
I'D like to tell you about all the exciting automotive developments in the north west this week, but I can't because I'm in Germany.
Here I have been blasted down the autobahn at speeds which in the UK would be very illegal, I've seen many mouthwatering motors which have clearly had kots of love lavished on them by their owners and - best of all - I managed to gatecrash a gathering of gorgeous old Maseratis earlier today (more on this soon - stay tuned). Germany, clearly, has a lot of petrolheads.
But they don't have my favourite motoring TV show, which is on the airwaves back in Blighty and I'm knowingly missing out on.
Some say that it's never far from controversy, and that it could only ever be presented by three opionated, middle-aged men.
All I know is it's called Top Gear.
Life On Cars writer David Simister is currently overdoing it on the currywurst, but normal, British-based service will resume tomorrow (July 17).
When Top Gear used to have facts in it
THE chap at the bar, despite being someone I'd never met before, turned to me and went all car enthusiast on me.
"Where's your Mini, then?" he asked, deducing that as I was in the pub with mates from the local Mini owners' club, my notoriously fickle example would be outside in the car park, rusting quietly.
"Sold it. I've got an MG now," I responded, expecting that to be that, but a glint in his eyes somehow revealed I wasn't getting off that lightly.
"What sort of MG?" he asked.
"An MGB," I said, smug in the knowledge that the MGB, of course, is a proper MG, crafted centuries ago by stout chaps in the actual Morris Garages factory in the good old days. Not for me some Rover 25 with a Halfords bodykit. Unfortunately, I still wasn't going to be let off that lightly.
"What sort of MGB?"
Now usually I'd panic at this point because - as regular readers - will know, I'm a fully committed car enthusiast but not one who actually knows anything about how cars actually work. This could be a proper grilling from someone who actually knows how carburettors work. This could be embarrassing.
Luckily, the night before, I'd watched an old Public Information Film, which usually cover things like the Highway Code and why not to fish next to electricity pylons, but in this case it was an old Top Gear clip I'd found which might as well have been called Things you should know if you're about to get grilled by an MGB enthusiast. For once, I've actually learned something!
I'd like to lie and show you this clip I found on YouTube for the benefit of everyone who has even a vague interest in old sports cars, but really it's for the benefit of my dad, who despite knowing a trillion times more about cars than I do admits even he's got gaps in his knowledge of Britain's best selling roadster.
What's more, it's from an episode of proper Top Gear from ye olden days, so you get the idyllic image of an enthusiastic bumble through the countryside and some facts.
So there you have it, Mr Man at the Bar; I own a '72 GT in Harvest Gold with the 1.8 litre, BMC B-Series engine, four speed box with the desirable Overdrive option, Webasto sunroof and Rostyle steel wheels.
What's more, it's nearly finished and there's a summer of blasting it down country roads in the sunshine just a few months away. I can't wait.
Peel P50: tiny car, big investment
SUPPOSE you landed a spot on business-savvy BBC show Dragon's Den. Given five smirking tycoons and an audience of millions, what would you pitch?So far the series has put serious amounts of cash behind a brand of spicy sauce, a treadmill for dogs, an indie band and a teddy bear that doubles up as an MP3 player, so they're not averse to making the occasional odd investment. But a four-ft-long car last made on the Isle of Man over forty years ago? Thanks to James Caan, the Peel is making a comeback!
Most peoples' experience of this miniscule motor is still the slightly ridiculous Top Gear episode from a couple of years ago, shown below, when all 6 ft 5 of Jeremy Clarkson squeezed himself in for a quick spin around the BBC News offices in London. He jokingly said it was the future, but James Caan is serious enough to stack a whopping £80,000 in its favour.
Both the Peel P50 and the Trident, were powered by ancient moped engines when they first appeared in the early Sixties but when it's given the Dragon's Den treatment it'll be propelled along by an eco-friendly electric unit and cost around £8,000, which is about the same as you'd pay for the four-seat treatment you'll get in a Fiat Panda. But no matter how hard you try, you can't get a Fiat Panda into an elevator, and that's the P50's party trick.
Regular readers will already know I'm a big fan of fun little cars; along with owning an original Mini, I've admired the clever packaging of Toyota's tiny IQ since it was launched last year, and the Gulliver's World proportions of the Peel just take things to a surreal new level. In much the same way as you want a phone that fits in your pocket, you know you want a car you can leave in that cupboard under the stairs at night.
Would I buy one? Absolutely, although Champion Media Group might have to take a more liberal look at its car parking policy if I do. I'd leave mine next to my desk in the newsroom.
Top Gear - how hard can it be?
THIS week, I give you the nation's favourite tame racing driver. Some say he's a Formula Three driver and that if he reveals his identity in an autobiography, he'll be going to court.All we (officially) know is he's called The Stig.
The nationals' ongoing fascination with Top Gear's mystery man in the white racing overalls shows not only how big the Beeb's biggest programme is in 2010, but just how far the show - something its creator claimed would be getting back to basics this year - has moved away from being the pokey motoring show I grew up with.
Like the many millions of you who watched the last series being its usual outrageous self on Sunday nights, I still think the show's rip-roaringly funny, defiantly different and, in the case of the magnificent Senna tribute piece, serious and poignant when it wants to be. But the things that made me love it in the distant old days of, oooh, the Nineties, are long gone.
In case you don't remember, Jeremy Clarkson was part of an equally entertaining triple act with smarmy used car expert Quentin Wilson and the now Fifth Gear frontman Tiff Needell, who doubled up as the closest thing they had to a tame racing driver. They were funny too, but while giving voiceovers on Vauxhalls you might have actually bought at the time.
Sure, some of the pieces were depressingly dull but one of my own favourites from 1995, where Jeremy Clarkson refused to say anything about the Vauxhall Vectra he was testing, would never happen on the current show. In a world of bizarre challenges, supercars and visits by Tom Cruise, they wouldn't have time for a Vauxhall Vectra.
The very different show you get a decade on isn't something I'd ever want Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow to tamper with - and it'd still be just as entertaining whether you knew who the Stig was - but I reckon Auntie's created a gap for another show closer to the Top Gear I grew up with. There must be millions of people out there who want to know whether a Vauxhall Meriva is better than a Skoda Roomster. Get some talented TV presenters, stick them on BBC Four and make them say something interesting about cars each week.
The BBC are missing a trick!
UPDATE: Andy Wilman, the producer of Top Gear, has thrown his opinion into the mix...
Reasonably priced Kia is a Stig decision for Top Gear
TOP Gear's reasonably priced car is now a reasonably priced Kia, after the producers of the hit BBC show switched their celebrity racer for the start of the latest series.Anyone who watched Clarkson, Hammond and May in their latest TV adventures on BBC Two last Sunday will have seen them switching their affections to the Kia Cee'd , something the car's makers are keen to promote despite the presenters making mischevious comments about their models in previous shows.
“The last time Top Gear paid us any attention I think they tried to build one of our cars out of washing machines – so this is quite a step forward in their understanding of just how Kia has changed over the last six years,” said Stephen Kitson, Communications Director of Kia Motors UK.
“The Cee’d has become a strong player in the mid-sized family car market and just this year J. D. Power named it best small-medium car in their annual quality survey – so it should stand up well to anything the star guests can throw at it.
The C'eed, which has already been raced around the track by celebrities including Bill Bailey, TV dragon Peter Jones and BBC political editor Nick Robinson, is on sale now at a very reasonable £13,930.
Car killer or motoring magic?
JAMES May needs worry no more about the dubious title of Captain Slow, because I’ve nicked it.The Southport and Ormskirk District Mini Owners’ Club have granted me the slightly suspicious honour because I’ve just completed their annual jaunt over some of Britain’s steepest mountain passes and managed to hold up a mass of souped-up Minis because I was driving so slowly in mine. Yet the fact I completed it all, I reckon, is incredible.
This is the very same Mini that just weeks ago let me down in spectacular fashion by deciding it’d had enough of being a car and wanted to become a Reliant Robin instead, and tried to shed one of its wheels at 40mph. You can probably understand that even though it’d taken many hours of someone else’s painstaking work just to get it up to the 2010 Lakes Tour, based on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake District, I was still taking it a tad cautiously.
As a drive it’s the sort of thing you’d think twice about taking any car on, but would you entrust a 200 mile drive over some of the country’s most challenging mountain passes to a car with a one litre engine, an automatic gearbox, drum brakes and a ropey reliability record?
From the cramped confines of an old car on a lashing, wet Cumbrian morning it’s hard to appreciate the scale of just what I’d asked the Life On Cars Mini to do, so here’s the route in its epic entirety:
View Larger Map
It’s a real car killer of a drive, as the occasional Mini from one of the many other clubs taking part proved as we spied them sulking at the side of the country lanes. From the twists and turns of the mountain pass out to Alston to the one-in-three cliff faces of the Hardknott Pass, it was a hellishly difficult thing to do.
Then there was the agonising moment when the temperature gauge shot up, the car slowed to crawling pace and steam starting swirling out from beneath the bonnet. As it would if you’re trying to take a Mini 1000 Automatic up the Hardknott Pass. It looked, sounded and smelt awful, but once we’d let it cool down and given it a taste of mountain spring water, it started going again. And just kept going.
The car almost everyone had doubted just kept on going, soldering on over everything the Lakes could throw at it. On a day mostly marked out by dark clouds and constant drizzle, it was a burst of sunshine, and just to prove it wasn’t a one-off it followed the 200 miles of climbing by getting me home as well.
It might have been slower than everything else there but it was motoring magic. You should try it sometime.
David Simister will be appearing on the Live From Studio One on Dune 107.9 FM next Friday (June 25) at 6pm to talk about Britain’s best driving roads
