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A car programme for those who don't like car programmes
Link: http://www.topgear.com/
When I lived in the UK, "Top Gear" was a very traditional motoring show. They reviewed new cars, discussed their mechanical systems, looked at motorsports, and ended up being extremely boring. Take, for example, this review of the Sierra Cosworth from 1989. Dull, isn't it.
At some point in the last few years, the show got a makeover. While it's still a motoring show at its core, it's a pretty irreverent one. Wandering through the YouTube archives (it's not broadcast over here), you can find full-size remote control car racing, a comparison of a Range Rover and a Challenger 2 Tank, a game of Car Darts, the attempted destruction of a Toyota HiLux pickup, 30 mph headon collision tests of sub-100 quid cars, a used van test that included an evaluation of bank-robber getaway potential and, well, rather a lot more.
Definitely worth a look.
2 comments
Amazing when they can manage to freshen a show up like that.
I had the 1970 edition of “AA’s Book of the Car", which was just neat as anything - had how the innards of cars work, and well as new engines and drive mechanisms that were being used on race cars at the time, many of which eventually ended up in cars, including continuous gear drive and the infamous (and embarrassing to say!) Wankel-Rotary Engine.
I’d kill for a book like that, but I wouldn’t mind a show like that :)
“Fifth Gear", based on some reading, is the former “Top Gear” by another name; the current incarnation is more of a re-imagining of the series. “Fifth Gear” sounds like it’s a rather more straight and serious motoring show.
And, I suspect, dull as dishwater unless you really are a car fanatic.
