Sadly, this is the last episode of the series which means we’ve got half a year without any Top Gear action. Anyway, since it’s the last episode of the series, the boys play their “BBC gave us money but we’ve spent it all so we have to make do with this” card.

Cars in focus this episode – 1) the Lexus LF-A, 2) the BMW X6, and 3) the Vauxhall Insignia VXR. Seasick Steve is their Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car.

And since it’s the end of the year, it’s also time for the Top Gear awards. And the winners are:

• Injury of the Year – Richard and James banging their head on the in-cabin light in the Porsche Panamera – something that they’ve always put in cars while filming.
• Fastest Celebrity – AC/DC’s Brian Johnson
• Car of the Year – Lamborghini Gallardo Valentino Balboni because of the stripe.
• Cock of the Year – The Stig for locking the doors with the keys inside the Jaguar in their race between a Jag, a steam train, and the Vincent Blackshadow.
• Car of the Decade – For its Concorde moment – the Bugatti Veyron

For a detailed recap, visit Top Gear Season 14 Episode 7 recap.

The episode is a special extended feature on their South American adventure. The journey takes them from the Amazon rain forest through mountain roads all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Their Top Gear companions for this adventure – a Land Rover Range Rover (Clarkson), a Toyota Land Cruiser (Hammond) and a Suzuki Jimny (May).

They had to go through a stretch of jungle filled with insects, a river, a ravine, dirt roads, El Camino de la Muerte (the Road of Death), an active volcano, and a steep dune, all with the help of and some good old Top Gear camaraderie and some items from their producers which include condoms, Vaseline and Viagra.

For a detailed recap, visit our sister blog – CarFront News for the Top Gear Season 14 Episode 6 recap.

Jezza and the boys are at it again in the fourth episode of the series. In this episode, they drive down a sewer, powerslide across a field and do some other things as well.

First segment’s a fresh take on an old feature where Richard Hammond tries to solve the world’s travel problems by elevating them to motorsport. They already did that with MPVs and buses. This time, it’s airport vehicles. Driven by touring car drivers, they trash aircraft steps, a fire engine, a catering truck, a luggae trolley, and an aircraft tug.

In the news, they talk about their stance on homosexuality, the BMW M5 CLS, race sponsors and racing colors, and dumb ways to save the environment. Jezza test drives the Audi Q7, BMW X5 M, and the new Land Rover Range Rover to find out which car should crazy people buy. Guy Richie is the week’s star in a reasonably-priced car.

Finally, Jezza tries to do a normal test drive of the RenaultSport Twingo 133 Cup in the streets of Belfast. Remember the last time he did a normal test drive with the Fiesta? More of the same with the Twingo on the streets of Belfast.

Check out our full recap over at CarFront News. Top Gear Series 14 Episode 4 recap.

On to the third episode and quite a toned-down episode as far as the ambitious-but-rubbish stunts are concerned but at least they had one segment for their token stunt.

Remember that newsbit about James crashing into a tree bunch of trees in an airship? Well this episode is it. In an effort to clear Britain’s roads of caravans, James had the great idea of turning the caravan into an airship.

Top Gear also names their greatest automaker in the world. Last week, TG announced its poll for viewers to name the greatest automaker. The viewer’s picks accoridng to rank:

1. Ford
2. Volkswagen
3. BMW
4. Jaguar
5. Alfa Romeo
6. Mercedes-Benz
7. Audi
8. Land Rover
9. Lamborghini
10. Ferrari

Amazingly, not one of the viewers who participated in their poll guess their top pick which is – Lancia. Jezza and Hammond takes a trip down memory lane to look at the Aprilia, the Monte Carlo, the Stratos, and the Delta Integrale.

Check out our full recap over at CarFront News.

If you missed the last Top Gear episode, go check it out over at BBC. Hope you’d be able to watch it on iPlayer.

Anyway, if you live elsewhere, the show’s main feature is on the electric car developed by the Top Gear Technology Center which they built to rival the G-Wiz. The car, dubbed the Hammerhead-I Eagle Thrust, is powered by an electric motor from a milk float, a diesel generator sitting inside an aluminum sheet shell atop a TVR Chimaera chassis.

Part of the segment shows the Stig leaving the car over at Autocar for some third-party impartial testing. Check out some of Autocar’s takes on TG’s EV after the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Only four main features in this show but an entertaining one still.

The boys attempt a shot at building their own electric vehicle – the Geoff – and its improved version – the Hammerhead-I Eagle Thrust. The car’s basically made from a TVR Chimera chassis, a milk float electric motor, and some sheets of aluminium.

A slow news week as well for Top Gear as they discuss only a few points -1) Sheffield-based Manor Motorsport’s Formula One entry next season, 2) Mitsubishi i-MiEV police cars, 3) testosterone and cars, and 4) a preview of next week’s which automaker has made the most great cars.

The test drive segment features a couple of cars around the track – the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and the Audi R8 V10. Jezza explains why you should go for the ‘Vette. This week’s star in a reasonably-priced car is Michael Sheen.

For the full recap, visit our sister blog, CarFront News Top Gear Series 14 Episode 2 recap.

Top Gear’s back with another series and what a show to kick things off.

The boys head to Romania for a grand tour with Jeremy in an Aston Martin DBS Volante, James in a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, and Richard in a Ferrari California in an effort to find out which is the best convertible grand tourer in the market today. Coincidentally, they also seek out what they consider as the best driving road in the world – the Transfagarasan. Oh and yes. Romania is Dacia Sandero country.

In the news, the boys share their takes on Bathurst’s alcohol limit for spectators, the McLaren MP4-12C, the Porsche Boxtser and the PLOO portable cardboard potty.

For the car feature, James takes a look at the current BMW and Mercedes-Benz flagship sedans – the BMW 760LI and the Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG. It’s a heads-up battle of specs and tech with those two cars.

The Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car is Eric Bana (Hulk, Troy, Black Hawk Down) who dethrones Jaime Oliver’s quickest wet lap around the track (with the exception of F1).

For a more detailed recap head over to our sister blog, CarFront, with Top Gear Series 14 Episode 1 recap.

Series 14 is just around the corner but there will be last minute changes to Top Gear’s scheduling for this series. The series is due this November 15 but instead of its usual airing time, it will be move to a later 9PM slot.

The reason? Codpiece Cowell.

Clarkson even reposted this on his Facebook page announcing:

For this series only, we’re moving to 9pm on November 15. We had no choice really: X Factor on at the same time with the Results Show, Cowell on storming form, the whole nation glued – we know when to bravely bugger off and wait until the storm passes.

So that means British petrolhead kids would have to do a bit more negotiation with their folks regarding their bed time. And that’s just too bad for them.

Oh well. At least Jay Kay’s still top of the board.

Check out Top Gear’s special minisite for everyone’s favorite tamed racing driver. It’s got videos, a “Some say” segment, and “The Stig is listening to” portion. There’s also a cool photo of The Stig on which you can hover your mouse and display some of these facts about him (it?):

• He has a swivelling head
• When he blinks, you can hear a noise like a camera shutter
• No one knows what the LEDs on his neck mean
• These aren’t gloves; his hands really look like this
• You need to squirt this bit with WD40 every six months (or every 5,000 miles, whichever is sooner)
• He can only digest meat. And rocks
• His buttocks are the same spec as the tiles on the bottom of the Space Shuttle
• He has a group of freckles in the shape of Sir Jackie Stewart
• Both his hearts have variable valve timing
• One of his knees seems to attract cats
• One of his legs is hydraulic
• When he walks his feet make a sort of wah-wah guitar noise
• This bit bends the wrong way

Source: Top Gear

For the longest time, Top Gear has ignored the mad Ultima GTR720 racing car claiming that the Ultima will never clear a speed bump and thus, eliminates it from qualifying for the power boards. Maybe there’s internal politics involved but who cares?

Ultima claims that their GTR720 can take the fight to Ferrari and they (unofficially did). The GTR720 lapped the Dunsfold Park track inm 1:09.9 – almost a second quicker than the FXX’s 1:10.7 time.

Ultima also announced that they are confident that the car will clear speed bumps and invites doubters to their factory for a demo.

This, however, will not get into the Top Gear record books since it wasn’t officially sanctioned by the show or the BBC.

Maybe Clarkson knows that the Ultima can one-up Ferrari and being the Ferrari man that he is (and quite possibly pulling some strings to get Shumacher to dress up as The Stig is a favor owed).

Remember Top Gear’s last series when they revealed Michael Schumacher as the Stig after driving the phenomenal Ferrari FXX Evoluzione around the Top Gear test track? Well here’s a video of a quick interview of Schuey with the TG website staff. (Too bad it doesn’t allow embedding.)

Well the maestro said it himself. He doesn’t feel any adrenaline rush driving around the Top Gear track and it took him five laps to get the hang of it. At least that makes him still part human.

But you can’t blame the guy for not getting a hard on driving around the Top Gear track. The guy has lived his life driving F1 cars, for chrissakes. And the guy rides motorcycles and jumps out of airplanes for fun.

The FXX Evoluzione in the hands of Schuey Stig posted a quick 1:10 around the track. Too bad Jezza had to take it down the following show since, apparently, the FXX was running on slicks.

Jezza wrote an article on the Times Online recounting his latest experiences in the land of the free and home of the brave. As Top Gear fans would know, Jezza doesn’t really like America for all the fast food cheese and fat people.

His latest beef with America? Well his pal, the tamed racing driver called The Stig, got a run in with the law while filming at the Mojave desert.

“You know the Stig. The all-white racing driver we use on Top Gear. Well, we were filming him walking through the Mojave desert when lo and behold a lorry full of soldiers rocked up and arrested him. He was unusual. He wasn’t fat. He must therefore be a Muslim,” Clarkson wrote.

Anyway, this is Jezza writing so we just have to take his sweeping generalizations with a grain of salt. Will be interesting once details become clear on what actually happened, or once their film gets released.

Source: Times Online

And who said that presenting for Top Gear isn’t at all dangerous. Hammond used his head as a hoe doing 300 mph and Clarkson broke his neck plowing around the track in a Nissan GT-R. Now even Captain Slow has his own story to tell now.

The boys are filming yet another great stunt for the next series. The segment features James May in a camper can that’s slapped on the underbelly of a blimp. Things went wrong when winds started to blow, the blimp straying off course and crashing into a field.

As always, Top Gear continues to cock about it:

The good news is that our brave hero has emerged from the slightly scratched wreckage UNHARMED.

After PLUMMETING to the ground at a MASSIVE two miles an hour, May’s craft SLAMMED into a small bush and then just sort of STOPPED. Thankfully, trained rescue staff were on the scene in seconds to intercept James as he stepped out of the airship and were able to administer a much needed flask of TEA and some NICE BISCUITS.

May has since returned home for a SIT DOWN and some light piano practise, after which he is reported to be “very well, thank you for asking.”

Source: Top Gear

Heck, if Top Gear would need to boot someone out in place of a female presenter the likes of Tina Hobley, I wouldn’t mind not seeing Hammond ever again.

Tina Hobley, who stars as a nurse in Holby City was quoted in saying that she wants in if Top Gear ever needs a female presenter. However, “[o]ne of the guys would have to step aside. It’d have to be Richard Hammond. The Hamster has to go,” she said.

Quite honestly, Hammond has become a really annoying twat ever since his accident. Unfortunate but he has been getting on my nerves over the past few seasons after the crash.

Clarkson’s the main guy. May’s his foil. Yup. Hobley for Hammond any damn time.

Source: Top Gear Blog and Image Credit: Daily Mail

Not really Top Gear news but since it’s Jezza, why the heck not. Many people hate Jeremy Clarkson for a lot of reasons. He is, after all, one of the most politically incorrect people you can find. Now, it appears he’s having problems with ecomentalists.

Being a power-hungry gearhead myself, I do lament the near extinction of gasoline powered goodness. Clarkson is quite vocal about his reservations about this whole going-green trend. Clarkson already had a pie thrown to his face. Now, it’s his driveway that gets the same treatment but this time, it isn’t pie – it’s poo!

Seven members of ecomentalist group Climate Rush dumped seven bags of horse shit on Clarkson’s Cotswald house driveway and lawn. Afterwards, the members held up a banner saying “This is what you’re landing us in.”

Clarkson, like with the pie incident, was fairly amused by the stunt. “It’s nice of them to buy me something for my roses,” Clarkson said. “I must buy them a patio heater.”

Source: Telegraph

We’re finally halfway into the new series and this episode has surely kept it very interesting. In this episode, the boys find out what is the best £1,500 rear-wheel drive car, Jeremy test drives the new Jaguar XFR around their test track, explore ways to save the environment, and put Sienna Miller inside their Chevrolet Lacetti.

It’s a fun show with most of it focusing on the challenges the boys had to go through driving their £1,500 rear-wheel drive cars. Jezza gets a Porsche 944. Richard drives a Nissan 300ZS. James picks a Ford Capri. They drive through France, set lap times around a track, test the breaking, and enter an ice race in the Alps.

Around the track, Jeremy finds out how good the Jaguar XFR is compared to its rival – the BMW M5 – and found it just as good. For a green trip, Jezza investigates how to effectively lower car emissions to essentially zero using lime soda crystals. Sienna Miller does a sub-1:50 around the track.

For the recap, visit CarFront.

If you happened to miss Top Gear, you can always check out bits and pieces on their website or view clips on their YouTube page. Or you can always check it out here or over at CarFront for our lengthy recap of Top Gear Season 13 Episode 4.

The show was jampacked with action. They featured the Ford Focus RS and the Renault Megane R26R around the track with some head-to-head action. No epic races yet but James and Richard took on the Royal Mail in a race from Scilly Islands to Orkney in the Porsche Panamera. Olympian and the Fastest Man in the World, Usain Bolt, is their star in the Chevy and Jeremy found a creative way to crush a drug dealer’s car with the help of the Royal Army.

Quite a funny episode with a lot of the usual mix of comic styles from the three presentors and even a couple of power laps from The Stig.

It’s the start of the new week and we’re back for more Top Gear goodness. Jezza, Captain Slow, and Hammond returns with a challenge and a surprise shootout for the show.

Top Gear is back with its second episode of its 13th series. In this show (well, according to Clarkson) – they throw a chair over a hedge, a quite interesting man drives their reasonably-priced car, and a race between the Bugatti Veyron and the McLaren F1.

Sans Jeremy’s vagueness, the show featured a challenge to find a reasonable car for 17 year old boys, a view of the new Lamborghini Murcielago LP-670 SV, Stephen Fry in a reasonably-priced car, and a shootout between the Veyron and the F1.

For a lengthy recap, visit CarFront.

Here’s a quick site news for you AutoJab fans. Starting with last night’s episode of Fifth Gear, our recaps will be posted on AutoJab’s sister car site: CarFront.

So if you’re looking for our segment-by-segment recap on you favorite motoring shows like Top Gear and Fifth Gear, head on over to CarFront!

So speculations had it that Ben Collins was outed as The Stig a few months ago and the Top Gear team just downplayed it by neither confirming or denying the story. Well, they did release a few humor stories claiming that the Stig is Graham Hill but that’s just fluff.

Top Gear opened their series by dropping the best bomb shell ever by revealing Michael Schumacher as the person under the white overalls and crash helmet. Really well played on their part and amazing television indeed. What better way to blast the controversy.

Now this, I guess would free up Ben Collins from the backlash. I’m assuming they won’t let him go since they’d have a hard time finding a regular test driver with such balls as Collins. Unless, of course, Schumi ultimately takes on the job. I’m still with the idea that the Stig’s played by many drivers.

Anyway, here’s the clip again if you haven’t seen it yet.

Yessss! Top Gear’s finally back and what a season opener they’re dishing out! The series is packed with the trademark ambitious but rubbish. In the show – Richard tries to start a motorbike, James fuels his car with petrol, and Jezza gets a British rail suntan.

The show opens up a preview of the whole series. It really looks awesome with fast cars, explosions, guns, babes and dinosaurs. But probably the biggest bit for this series is scheduled on their series opener – The Stig unmasked! *gasp*

The first segment tackles a letter asking what the boys will be doing if they were doing Top Gear sixty years ago. Jezza’s reply: “Exactly the same.” This, my friends, is the intro to yet another epic race. It’s 1949 Jaguar XK120, the Vincent Blackshadow, and Peppercorn A Pacific-class steam locomotive. It’s a race pitting the fastest bike, the fastest car, and a train designed at that time from King’s Cross to Edinburgh.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh yeah! Only a few more days to go before Top Gear’s Series 13 airs on BBC. While we’ll still be covering the other motoring show named Fifth Gear, we’re really more interested in writing recaps of Top Gear.

Jezza, Captain Slow, and Hamster and by the looks of it white Stig are back with another run of ambitious but rubbish television!

BBC unloaded a couple of teaser trailers featuring kid version of the presenters. Lucky that the YouTube gods have made them available real quick. View the embedded clips after the cut.

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Top Gear is a man show. Quite a lot of females are into it too, but if you hae three bumbling blokes on the program (spearheaded by Mr. Clarkson), it’s definitely a man show. A new Equality Bill brewing in Britain creates the possibility of a female co-presenter join Jezza, Hamster, and Captain Slow.

The bill, introduced by Labour party deputy leader Harriet Harman, will require shows funded by the BBC to be “female friendly.” One of the brilliant suggestions is to add a female co-presenter. Whether bringing back Top Gear Dog counts or not remains to be seen.

I’m sure Mr. Clarkson has something to say about this. The addition of the likes of Sabine Schmitz (or Danica Patrick in her bikinis for the whole Top Gear hour!) come to mind.

Executive Producer Andy Wilman said, “If the show is allegedly female-unfriendly, why is almost half the audience female? Secondly, if we are to have a female presenter just to represent the sexes, then by that logic Loose Women needs a bloke in the line-up pretty sharpish.”

I sort of love how Top Gear is taking the whole Ben Collins thing in stride. To join into the fray, the Top Gear blog officially unveils the true identity behind the Stig. And no, it’s not Ben Collins – it’s Graham Hill! For those of you young’uns, Graham Hill is the legendary racing driver who happened to spawned another GP champion named Damon. Here’s a snippet of how, supposedly, some dead guy became the Stig.

So they approached Graham Hill, whose professional driving career was over at that point, and asked him to crash a plane and then hide in a bush until he got the call from the Top Gear team 20 odd years later,” said a BBC insider.

And no, it’s not through some blabbermouth gallery man that the Stig’s cover was blown. Top Gear reports that “The mystery driver’s identity was uncovered when a cleaner discovered some empty tins of moustache wax in a Mclaren SLR that the Stig had just lapped round the Top Gear test track.”

Funny. But come on, will they be firing Collins after this? Please no. Unless they can convince someone faster (like Michael Schumacher) to replace him around the track.

Source: Top Gear

If this is true, then damn you, Ben Collins. Damn you!

The White Stig’s identity has been one of the best kept secrets in petrolhead history and knowing his true identity is like knowing who was on the grassy knoll. The mysticism that surrounded The Stig’s identity made him the icon that he is.

The Telegraph reports that the Stig is, indeed, Formula 3 and Le Mans driver Ben Collins. Collins allegedly approached the staff of Bristol gallery when Collins asked them to come up with a limited-edition print of The Stig in action. Now wouldn’t that be a dumb move especially since The Stig’s contract states that if he voluntarily outs himself, he’d get axed. Much like what happened to Black Stig (Perry McCarthy) back in Series 2 of Top Gear.

Through the years, bits and pieces of the Stig puzzle pointed to Collins as the head inside the helmet but the lack of confirmation gave every Top Gear fan something to appreciate. Now, this just ruins the whole Stig experience and would render all of the “I am the Stig” T-shirts worthless.

I hope that this is just a minor boo-boo and that the “multiple Stig” theory is true. That way, even if Collins is sacked, we’d still have hope that those blistering lap times can still be achieved by someone else. Or maybe that was just BBC’s deliberate move to keep us guessing and debunk the rumor (though well-accepted) that Ben is really The Stig.

Source: The Telegraph