Top Gear BBC car show thread.

The new Top Gear showed on Sunday evening.

***Spoiler alert***



Complete with the new crew.

The name "Flop Gear" has been bandied about by a few... some say its not going to be a hit.

We mentioned there may be some changes.
Painting the tyre wall white, a new BLUE border around some of the track, yeah, minor changes?.
Putting a rally cross off road section into the track?... and using a new MINI rally cross edition?...
Thats not a "reasonably priced car" anymore is it?.

Putting a gantry on the main stage... well, I suppose he wants a bigger audience?..

But as "Scuttlebut" has it that he (chris) went intro a protracted rant at the audience in one of the recent filming sessions because some of them were not laughing at his (lame) jokes...........

I suppose you will eventually get it aired in the US-of-A... dont over-expect too much from it.

We suggested some changes to make it fresh.
We suggested that they did NOT try and ape the existing format.
They ignored those suggestions. But tried o joke "We dont mention the catering around here any more"

And as for a road trip 250 mile up the Motorways in "plastic rat" reliant robin 3 wheelers that are barely capable of making the national speed limit (60) let alone Motorway?... and on 30+yrs of age each?.. and neither of them having a decent service beforehand?... well, you could see the script that the older car would break down.
The question was "Well Why?..."
Its not as if those particular cars were popular classic or even worth buying... unless you are in the unique position of being in the fan club.
And why the hell did they cut the roof off one of them?...
I ask because I know the vehicles, and I would suggest that the roof of a Mono-Cocque type build, even if it is glass fibre is an important part of its structural rigidity....
But Oh No.
Its better that way if Matt is seen to be wet and suffering in the rain....

Its obvious that the Evans will be "The main star" and other hosts will be there to be the but of his lame jokes or to popularise his own career.
The four-eyed-buck-tooth-ginger-swamp-rat will ride roughshod over everyone else and proclaim it a success....
There is a four letter word that has a lot to do with the ships anchor that I could use to describe him.

Correction, in above post I mentioned Reliant Robin.
I believe I may have been wrong in that they cars used were Reliant Rialto replacement for Robins from 1982.

I think there is enough evidence to draw a line between Clarkson, May and Hammond and the new TG.
Not because of the differences, but because of the duck, one of its legs is both the same.
They had a unique opportunity to make something new, which didnt happen, they could have re-invented the whole show, they didnt, and now are trying to make it "ALL NEW!!!!" which it isnt.

Therefore, I propose we change the name of the thread to Clarkson Versus **All New** Flop Gear....

Whatever Clarkson and the others do now, it has to be better than this?...

He has always been a love him or hate him figure, Top Gear has a chance to grow now he has left, particularly if they don't schedule it when a major sporting championship is going on.

www.topgear.com/car-news/top-gear-tv/statement-chris-evans

No we dont, not "everyone", so that was a lie.

Him leaving?.. good.
Can he please take eddie jordan with him?.
FFS, the man has proved he can barely drive an Off-Roader with the right suspension settings [you see the button marked off road that raises the suspension height?.. push it!. .. So he didnt, and ripped the fuel tank off the underneath...]
He hasnt really done anything more than just turn up, so what is the point of an eddie jordan?.

As for Evans, I dint really object to him as a presenter on the show, when he actually got to do any presenting, but the off-camera reports of him "Laying into the crowd in the studio for not laughing at his jokes" sort of thing is beyond the pale.
If the audience dont laugh, the joke bombed, choose a new one...
Otherwise, it was a season, just about, it may have survived, but it tried to emulate the old style too much, and tried to do it "better", which bombed.
The old style was almost effortless in its easy to watch manner.
This new season looked too much staged-for-the-camera.
You have a chef in the back of a moving vehicle trying to cook?... anyone NOT able to predict the script there?..

Changing the star-in-a-reasonably-priced-car to a star in a rally stage car...
Tats NOT the type of car that the average man would drive, so its simply bombed.
However....
The last show, watching Greg Davis of 6ft 8 height squeezing his ample frame into a Mini.... he is a man well built, in the way you stuff a chesterfield sofa way of well built, that and his height, how the hell DID he get in a Mini?..
That "Comedy gold" was purely due to Greg Davis, he owned the moment.

Was that the only best bit?..
I hope not.
"The car is the star".
They have managed to place into the mess some reviews of new cars, or even old cars re-worked, into the show, and that works, because the cars were good enough on their own.

However.
Noted that the stallion flies in UK...
Yep, they have managed to put the steering wheel on the RIGHT side of an American classic Muscle Car and put independent suspension on the rear to help it with the UK roads....
But the two engine options of the full V8, or an "Eco-boost" 4-pot 2ltre?.. who the hell buys a muscle car without the muscle?...

Would I buy one?.

No.
Never.

Why?..
Because for the same price I can get a UK classic that was built in the first place to manage UK roads...
That and the fact I aint American anyway.

Your "small light" Mustang is the size of my family car.
And my family car is quite big enough thanks....
I have the 1.8, which is considered large by any years standards, the last Carena had a 1.6, and still managed 120mph on a track. Would have been more, but I ran out of talent before I ran out of road.
Performance wise, what the mustang can get with even it modern lump of V8, I can get in a "Family" car of half that displacement over here.
And in performance, I would look at track times of a circuit as well, because 0-60-0 and one lap of the proper TG circuit, are equally important, as most of our roads have many bends you need to slow for.
If I was to go for a UK equivalent of your muscle car, which is quite hard to define, the difference in lap times is plainly embarrassing.
Which is why the new Mustang has a independent suspension setup these days.... who knows, it may get adaptive suspension, Traction Control, ABS, and all the other toys that european cars have, and actually get to make some that "Work" rather than just have the alphabet spaghetti claims...
Perhaps thats what they are up to.
Updating the car by running it on european roads to get some of the technology we have...
It may be being sold at a loss here to get that update, but those updates will work better in the USA market?.
And why here?.
F1.
Because we have such a rich racing history around the area just around "oxbridge" that has a lot of car technology firms that supply the touring cars, and the like, we are pretty much stacked on vehicle technology at this time.
It would benefit many car makers to have a look at what is being developed in racing.
It always has, it always will.

And what would the weight of that be just for interest?.

In comparison, it started with the Golf Mk1, or I think you lot call it the Rabbit, VW's first "Hot hatch", when we over here started getting into small light sporty numbers that had handling that could be extremely "educational" if you push hard enough.

We started getting what can only be described as Porsche power out of "A reasonably priced car".
At that time, I was driving a Caviller MK1, 1600 engine as standard with twin down draught webber carburettors and some other "tasty" add ons, such as K&N filters, that allowed me to keep pace with that Golf.

My Current Avensis, built around the turn of the century and hasnt changed much in design over the 10 yrs or so they made them, has currently a performance window that is much MUCH better than those two cars... in that if I had had this car back in the 80's-90's, I would have won races, even with my lack of racing talent.

The thing is they are LIGHT weight.
As in, we produce a whole car that is less than the weight of just your v-8 engine bay.
And in being that light, it changes direction so much quicker, it would leave your american cars wondering what the hell just happened?..
Think of the humble Mini.
You cant get much more "Compact" than that. Without being extremely silly on what constitutes a 4-seater car that is.
With the 1275 GT engine, and later "Cooper" upgrades, it won races against cars twice its weight.
It only stopped winning when 4 wheel drive systems of the Audi Quatro hit the roads.
And 1275 is the actual engine size... thats all it needed.
Trust me, we put an over-engineered 1500 engine in one, and the power was too much.

"Horses for courses"
If you took one of our little hot hatches around your ovals, well, no, that aint happening, it may impress you with speed its capable of, but winning races, I doubt that.
But put the two different cars, yours and ours, on a race track such as is used by touring cars, one with LOTS of corners, and that is a different matter.

You have Laguna Seca, tracks like that are what we call the ideal teat track.

If you know "The Green hell", Nürburgring...



That is a 14 mile track with an "expected" circuit time of an experienced driver of around 10 mins with a little practise.

Bring some of your american muscle cars....
But bring a tow truck if you want them back.

We do sprint races here, we have the half mile standing start in a single direction, but for us, a circuit with some nasty bends in is much more entertaining?..
And our cars are built for roads with many changes of direction, in all three dimensions, up down over through around (and around) (and around) and twisty.

And for entertainment?...
I had a Mini with 1000 cc on the boot lid... that was a bloody liar.
It was a 1500cc.
I used to get Golf Mk2's at the side of me trying to race me away from the lights.
When I hit "Go", you could see the look of shock.... I get up to 30mph, or the posted limit, and stop playing, because the point had been made.
Most of the time I got a look of "Impressed....but WTF?..!!" from the other driver.


As for the Toyota Corolla "AE86" variant, that was a 1.6 4A-GE engine that is the same lump used in the Toyota MR2.
I have owned both the Corolla and the MR2, the MR2 was a short term ownership between me finding it and selling it back working for a reasonable profit after a partial engine swap when the previous owner ran out of sense and swapped from 5th to 1st.... at 80mph... [kapoof....]
I had a drive and have always envied the owners, but the cramped head room and need for a crane to get me out again, I cant get in one of them, too small.

If you can imagine them as "Standard" performance of what we expected of our cars at the time, you know what we expect.

When we "Improve" them.....

If you can get anything on the BTCC races, British Touring Cars, or the DTM, German equivalent, or La Monz, and many other of the same, the not GT2 cars, the based on a road car runners, then you get what we can get when we try hard.
All 4 wheels pulling you around a corner in a slight powerslide... tasty... cornering with two wheels in the air... interesting.... doing all that on a track where light contact is sort of allowed.... erm... "entertaining"?...
And all that based on cars taken from the production line of normal road going cars.

In Comparison, in America, what you have is well worth taking a look at, in America, it just isnt working over here, because we have smaller roads, you dont have the space to do that.

That is why we dont go "Wild" for American cars here.
We just dont have the space....
And we can do better with smaller lighter cars with fuel economy above 20mpg for everyday use.
The track car we built out of a Mini that had world class (at that time) performance was getting 20mpg on track...
30 mpg on the road, 35 if you drove it careful.
Which of course we never did....

And what can we do with a sub-2ltre engine?.
Formula 1.

They now all use 1600 cc engines .

Would you ever consider the possibility of matching a v-8 Oval car against a F1?.. who do you think would win?.
On an Oval as well if you want.
If you did try that, the F1 car wont be slowing for the corners....
What they will do is set up the downforce to be full thrutch throttle on the limit for the corners and use the DRS for the straights... over 200mph target... for the whole lap.
What they get may differ in reality, on the track, the surface, the amount of grip, the weather, etc?..

Its a honest question, who do you think is going to win that one?..

TLW, Define "Simple" terms.....
It may be to Americans, but the rest of the world see huge slabs of steel on the top three, and an iconic Corvette and E-Type jag below that.
The bottom two are two-seater.
This is quite reasonable or those who dont have family to lug about in UK.
So maybe not the lower income car owner who will want utilitarian cover all bases 4/5 seater 5 door.
But we dont all want to be able to move home in one boot full either...

Nor do we have the fascination with changing engines and sending a car to be completely customised as soon as its bought, unless we are into the racing scene.
Mostly if we want "extra's" we buy them as we order the car.

As it stands, the bottom two, if anyone made the choice, over here, it would be the E-Type, because of conservation...
Not a car to drive, just one to keep, and show off in now and again.
Because old cars dont have the same abilities as New cars.
You can now pick up an E-Type "Eagle" from a specialist makers in south england who do a complete resto-mod, and put a whole new car underneath a replica body....
It has modern everything, is 10 times MORE reliable (not that the old E-Type was that bad anyway) and hasmodern suspension tyres brakes engine ABS ESP Traction control and "All the toys"...
For those who liked the old MG BGT, 100,000 can buy you a complete restored old body new underneath of todays technology and not a single drum brake in sight.... as in it goes and stops at TODAYS pace.
The performance of last years 80-90's cars is availiable today in the family "sedan" 5 seater with Ncap 5star safety rating and "all the toys" of ABS Traction airbag satnag package, Second hand as well.

As for our older "classic" cars, Escort Mk1/Mk2, Mini, Astra, anything BL, and may other rust-box cars post 60's onwards, they were extremely unreliable, troublesome, smoked like a factory chimney, fix-or-repair-daily, and took two trips, one to pick up the pieces that fell off the last trip.
Why the hell would we want to keep those cars on the roads unless we extensively resto-mod rebuild them with a better paint job that lasted past the first winter and an engine rebuild that was reliable?.

As for American cars on UK roads.
We dont have the parts for them.
If your Mustang breaks down, and its a water pump, **££How $$$ MUCH!!** to import the spare part to repair it?.
Can I just wrestle a pump off say a large truck or small ship to do the same work?.

Your american cars to the "Average" man, maybe petrol head, maybe even small time enthusiast, are seen as too big, too heavy, too thirsty, too troublesome, and too much like hard work to run on our roads.

Its not that we dont like the idea of them, we do, and many are classics in their own right.
But admiring and owning are different.

Its just the roads are too narrow and we dont have the support structure or repair spares and sales to keep that type of car running for 100,000 miles.

And it would take maybe close to a weeks wages just to fill the petrol tank for many of them.

bear in mind, all of those cars are, as best google can ascertain, 1967 models, which was around the time the "pony car" description came into being.

to use words: and a brand I am more familiar with.

the Chevy Impala was the muscle car, the Nova was the pony car.




at that time, british cars were for rich middle aged men in the midst of mid-life crises - because nobody else could afford to keep them running, and they were useless for carrying your family or the week's groceries. (the only ones we imported were two-seaters)