Top Gear

[USAndretti42]

There are plenty of "what shall we buy Dad?" type DVD's featuring Clarkson's clowning around for a bit of apres Xmas lunch 'entertainment' - but to watch it on a weekly basis is just, well.. Aaargh! Thank for reference books! ..bah humbug...

...next I'll be reading how you all liked 'The Fast & The Furious' too eh?

Must admit my kids got me 2 Top Gear DVD's for my birthday. One has the stunt where they tried to jump 14 motorbikes with a bus. Totally pointless and totally stupid and totally funny. I do prefer when they are talking about cars rather than messing about but they are usually entertaining. I, and others at work, thought the trip to America was very funny and the Bugatti thing with May driving and the bit with them messing about on the golf course.

Haven't seen the episode in question so I can't comment on that one but it is a fine line between being silly and entertaining and being just silly so it's easy to believe that they may have overstepped the mark.

Road Track magazine has a weekly TV show over here and it's dull, boring with poor presenters and low production qualities such as the photography, location choices, no internal shots of the car when driving. Shows how good Top Gear is.

P.S. Didn't like the Fast 'n' Furious.

[wiseraven]

At least you guys got to see the show. I was ill in bed on Sunday and missed it - just tuned in to watch the repeat and the bunch of pussies at the BBC had pulled it because it featured a train crash and someone just died in one. FFS, it was a safety film - designed to SAVE lives. How the hell can that be insensitive? If anyone really is so terminally stupid as to be unable to cope with this, they're welcome to choose not to watch it, but don't expect the whole of the country to share your misgivings.

When my mum died of breast cancer, I didn't expect anyone to pull all programs featuring mums or women with breasts just because I might get upset. Why should anyone receive special consideration just because their personal tragedy made the news? What makes their grief more special than that of the rest of the world that has lost a loved one? What the hell is happening to the world where no one has any sense of proportion? And why the hell am I asking so many questions?

Time for a smooth drop of Glendronach methinks, before downloading a bittorrent.

Glug...

[mr50bmg]

I got to see only a few episodes before my cable channel stopped offering the show. My favorite was when Clarkson was trying to break 10 minutes on the Nurburgring - fantastic! I especially liked the German lady's comments ("10 minutes? Listen, I do that time in a van.").

[esprit350]

in case you did not see it, the German lady was Sabine Shmit who, a few episodes later, did do it in just over 10 mins in a Ford transit van

[Paul93Lotus]

They had to drive from Miami to New Orleans after buying a car for less than the equivalent hire cost - i.e. less than a thousand bucks per car. One of the challenges was to survive a night under canvas eating only roadkill. Another was to try to get each other killed by painting slogans on the side of the cars and driving through the deep south ('Nascar SUCKS' was a tame one).

But the telling thing for me was them arriving in New Orleans and realising that the greatest and richest country on earth was too busy fighting imperialist wars abroad to do a damn thing about rebuilding the Katrina-ravaged city. A full year later much of the place hadn't been touched at all and was still derelict.

The other was that, at the end they gave away their cheap cars (the original plan had been to sell them) to the poor people who had lost everything in the hurricane. One recipient then threatened to sue for massive damages because the car had been described as a 1991 and was in fact a 1989 model...go figure.

If you are getting your insight on the United States from Jeremy Clarkson, than I am afraid you are truly lost. Also keep in mind that a trip from Miami to New Orleans is going to take you through some really "backwoods" type cities in the South, and the residents in some of these towns hardly represents typical Americans. Even people in other parts of the United States make fun of some of these backward people. It doesn't take much thought to figure that any interaction with this type of person would make for good TV.

Jeremy Clarkson regularly blasts Americans. things made in America and American cars. He definitely seems to have an "agenda" when it comes to anything American. Going through billybob parts of the South would only reinforce negative American stereotypes.

As far as Katrina, keep in mind the whole city was underwater. If you didn't have flood insurance then you are s#$t out of luck, your home was destroyed. Any people that had a mortgage and extensive flood damage likely just "walked away"...and the properties will remain derelict till foreclosed and later sold by the bank. The government will give you a low interest loan to rebuild but that's about it. Would you stay on your Isle of Man if your house was destroyed and where you worked was destroyed? What would keep you there? You'd move somewhere else and start over.

When I bought my Esprit in Atlanta, Georgia and drove it back to Los Angeles, I had to drive through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I was not impressed by any of it except some parts were beautiful. Definitely was praying I would not break down in one of those states. I purposely avoided New Orleans as I had no desire to even go near the city....as it will be impoverished for some time to come.