pavlovscat on 11/12/2007 at 05:29
My husband & I watch this show all the time. We own one of the first 2,000 American 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX wagons, so I'm always happy to see anything on the new STi...which finally comes as a wagon!
Aside from that, I love fast little super cars that I will never own. Watching the antics of these guys when they burn up a car is great fun, too. The "cool" or "uncool" rankings usually have us shouting out our opinions...especially when we don't agree!
Scots Taffer on 11/12/2007 at 06:29
Oh and to simultaneously answer the OP and provide a tangent: no, I don't think Top Gear is the best TV show in the planet.
Every year a show rises up above its competitors and gets named a show for that particular year as being perhaps "the best on the planet", maybe a few years ago it was the first season of Lost, maybe then it was the first season of Rome, or a season of Deadwood, this year has been all about Dexter fucking Morgan bitches. If you haven't caught Dexter in 2007, you don't know what the fuck.
Koki on 11/12/2007 at 09:44
It might have been indeed best TV show, was it not for the fact that it's british
D'Arcy on 11/12/2007 at 10:46
I suppose it would be a bit more interesting to me if I actually liked cars. Which I don't. I hate driving, hate cars, and hate drivers in general.
Scots Taffer on 11/12/2007 at 11:01
then get the fuck off my road, faggot
D'Arcy on 11/12/2007 at 11:17
I can see you'd fit perfectly with the average Portuguese driver ;)
hopper on 11/12/2007 at 15:25
Quote Posted by D'Arcy
I suppose it would be a bit more interesting to me if I actually liked cars. Which I don't. I hate driving, hate cars, and hate drivers in general.
Well, I don't actually hate cars or drivers, and I kind of like driving (mostly), but cars don't interest me in the least, other than as tools that will take me from A to B. Any programme about cars certainly won't leave me drooling on my hard-on.
That said, yesterday I did casually turn my head after a black sports car that had briefly stopped in front of where I was standing. Turned out to be a Maserati. I admit I felt a vague sense of longing then :o.
SubJeff on 11/12/2007 at 16:45
Quote Posted by Koki
It might have been indeed best TV show, was it not for the fact that it's british
Oh just piss off. Why do you even come here?
Tocky on 12/12/2007 at 03:04
Now now, they also serve who only stand and wait to be runover.
How the hell can anyone not like all that chrome and power barely gripping the earth? You may as well not like explosions.
Where the hell did some of you lose your virginity? Mommys bed?
mol on 12/12/2007 at 10:02
Agreed with Dave, 100% Top Gear is simply the best show on the television. Not just as a car show, but any show, be it sitcom, prime-time series -- it's just feckin' brilliant!
I have no idea why I didn't watch it before, but it all changed for me one evening while at the summer place. Me and the missus had just come inside, and I turned on the telly. Lo and behold, the amphibious car challenge episode (not the channel episode, the other one with the reservoir) was on. Watched for a couple of minutes to see just what the hey it was all about....
... and I was hooked!
First of all, I just can't remember when I had laughed that hard the last time. Tears were in my eyes, my stomach hurt, I could barely gasp for air - it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.
Since then, I haven't missed an episode. Of course, not all of them are laugh-out-loud hilarious, but they never fail to entertain and amuse, and like Dave said, the cinematography of the series is bloody spectacular.
Just watch the episode where James May, dubbed as Captain Slow by his co-presenters (or, as May puts it: "See who I have to work with."), drives a Bugatti Veyron to its top speed of 407 km/h (that's 253 mph for those of you silly people still refusing to go metric). It is simply magic. Even my wife, who's really not a car person, thought it was riveting, amazing.
The three presenters, Richard Hammond, dubbed 'Hamster' by his co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson, James May, dubbed 'Captain Slow', and Jeremy Clarkson, who's usually referred to as "that insufferable oaf" by May, or "that big tall fella, curly hair, idiot" by Hammond -- they make the perfect presenting trio.
Clarkson is the somewhat boisterous, self-sure, car crazy front man of the lot. Top Gear is very much his show, although it wouldn't be anything without his co-presenters. He knows his cars, he likes them fast, he's verbally gifted, and hates to lose in challenges, which is why he usually tries to find some off-handed ploy to make him come on top in them.
Richard Hammond is the man who actually, by all accounts, should be dead, but isn't. He's short (and always gets teased about that), he's the comedian of the lot with his great subtle body language, looks, impeccable comic timing --- and survived a crash with a jet-powered Vampire drag-racer going at 464 km/h (288.3 mph ). He sustained a serious brain injury, and his recovery is something of a miracle. Telemetry of his runs with that car indicate that he actually broke the British land speed record driving 506 km/h (314.4 mph), but that's unofficial.
Inline Image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/TopGearVampireCrash.jpgJames May is a classically trained pianist, and the gentleman of the mad trio. Often the graceful butt of many jokes by his co-presenters, he brings a proper balance to the trio. His special skills are driving slowly, or, as Hammond puts it "May thinks even his hair grows too fast", getting lost (after all these years he still doesn't know how to drive to the Top Gear studios, and is the only person ever to have taken a wrong turn at the Top Gear test track). Yet, he's one of the few people in the world to have driven the Bugatti Veyron up to its top speed of 407 km/h, and is also with Clarkson and a small support crew the only person to have reached the Magnetic North Pole by a car (even though he didn't want to go there). May has a long history with cars, and knows a lot about them, having worked as a sub-editor in car magazines, among them the Autocar, from which he was fired having hidden a message in one issue:
Inline Image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/JamesMayAutocar.jpgThe format of the show includes segments like The Cool Wall, A Star in a Reasonably-Priced-Car, power laps by The Stig (the Top Gear tamed racing driver), an interview with the Star of the week, news, and challenges, which are usually totally outlandish and always absolutely hilarious.
It's just the best goddamn show on the planet. How they got all the bits together so right is amazing.
