[13x09] March 17th, 2008

[static]

I just loved how Jason bashed Lotus's ergonomics!

It's very refreshing. Usually brittish journalists seem to bit bit biased by Lotus because it comes from Britain. Especially Evo magazine seems to find nothing negative about it, ever.

That critisism alone made the episode very memorable in my books. It had very intresting cars as well, the (bit dealayed) Jaguar XF review, Subaru WRX vs GTi, nice cheap coupes and a cracking Bentley. Only thing I disliked were Daytona as I really don't give a damn and pickup truck segment.

The best episode yet in the series. Keep up the good work.

[dMa]

the nascar bit was extremely dissapinting. it was tiff doing a few laps at some horribly slow speed, come on! you can do 130 in my station wagon.

Vicky was good as usual but the lotus bit was boring. Pretty poor i feel

[rps]

This episode was nice but everything in it was sort of disappointing:

1 - The WRX lost against a simple Golf GTI (not even the 30th Anniversary edition). Ok, this was not exactly surprising (I have to check but I think "Motorsport", a French magazine found out that it was some 4 seconds slower than a Megane R26. And the track they use is also quite short). Let's hope the STI is less disappointing.

2 - So Vicky got the opportunity to drive a 200 mph car in a speed ring and got to ... 160 mph. This was disappointing. Maybe in that track it was not possible to do better and they don't have the budget or time to go to Nardo. But anyway...

3 - Tiff drives a Nascar, capable of 199 mph laps and gets to ... 131 mph. I can understand that it was not possible to get a team to let him drive one of the race cars at Daytona, but the introduction to the segment made one believe that he had driven an actual race car and not in such a short oval.

When Captain Slow drove the Bugatti he got to its real top speed! (407 km/h ?)

4 - And finally the Lotus Elise review shattered my opinion of it. That is a pity. The strange part is that I have been watching/reading reviews of various Elises, Exiges, etc. in Top Gear, (the French) Sport Auto, (the French) Motorsport, etc. for years (since the first Elise) and I had never seen anything so negative.

Oh, BTW, if I heard correctly, Jason was saying that the SC has some 80 HP more than the normal Elise. This is true but compares with the base version (Elise S), the one without variable valve timing, while the SC engine is based on the Elise R version, with variable valve timing and 192 HP.

[edkwon]

Originally Posted by awdrifter

Pretty boring ep. The shootout was good, I wasn't expecting the WRX to lose that badly though. Looks like Subaru really fked up the handling on this new chassis.

It doesnt surprise me, ive driven both the new WRX sedan and hatch and ive drive the past few generations of WRX as well. The new one is even taller, a little heavier than the older ones, it does have a much better chassis but a little short on power given its weight. The Gti chassis seems so much better tuned for driving dynamics. An unmodified WRX chassis is still setup to be more comfortable and soft, i think even more so given subaru's desire to market the car to a more mainstream market. The new Sti is a different story, they did a much better setup for aggressive driving in that car, however many argue its soft as well compared to prev generation Stis.

I also liked Tom Ford's review of the XF, yes it was more informative on a user-level that consumers can appreciate, versus James May's flash review, both reviews complement each other well.

[JCTK]

I was so looking forward to Tiff in the NASCAR.... but I was utterly disappointed...

but what he drove doesn't even seems like a proper NASCAR, it's a more junior version, can't really remember their class systems but it's like driving a 250cc and then you claimed u drove a Moto GP bike~! well the example is probably a bit exaggerated but u get the idea~

the WRX was surprisingly slow through, 4WD, 30 more horse power, on a slightly damp track, yet 2 massive seconds slower than the GTi~?! I never knew the Golf was THAT good...

the 2nd hand cars part done by Johnny sure is getting very good through~ interesting and informative~ but there're shitload of stuff I'd need to worry when owning anyone of the 3 coupe he mentioned, especially reliability~!

the rest I pretty much skipped...

[JCE]

Fairly entertaining ep, I gave it a 9.

[seldon]

Have to agree with most of you, i thought the subaru would kick the golf around the track especially on a damp day.

The Nascar feature was to weak compared to the daytona one, which i loved!

Best part was the used coupe guide, i love how the show that you can get really nice cars for small money instead of going to the boring maintream s**t.

[jaguarmark]

I was surprised that Johnny mentioned for around £1500 buying a Alfa Romeo. If you could only afford a car that was worth £1500 then chances are you will praying like mad that a car likes that doesn't go wrong because you probably won't be able to fix it on a small salary unless you find an Alfa specialist near your home.

Due to low volume and complexity it's not a car I would buy on a small salary. I could of course be wrong but Alfa Romeo's are cheap for a reason and having read lots of reviews it's a nice enough car until it needs a repair. From what Iv'e read if i was going to buy a GTV i would buy one with mileage as low as possible and of course the most complete service history that i could find.

The show was ok but the NASCAR film was a let down compared to last week's NASCAR race day which was really interesting. I think this show need's new presenters because I've tried but they are a difficult bunch to warm to.

[awdrifter]

I really don't mind the bad ergonomics of the Elise, it's not designed to be a daily driver, so it's the way it should be. Do we really want sound deadening and leather upholdstry in an Elise? The only thing in the Elise's interior design that needs improving is the steering wheel, an adjustable steering column shouldn't weight that much more, so maybe that would help out the driving comfort a bit. But other that (or even that) is diluting the Elise imo.

Originally Posted by Cobol74

Very good I really enjoyed that - XF was a really good review, NASCAR was better than expected (I agree with Viper on the "Have you had any race experience?" question).

I liked the honest Plato review of the Elise - get better at interiors guys.

I gave that a 9 (only just though).

[static]

The WRX has always been bit slow on track. Watch old Top Gear reviews and check the laptime board. 4wd Subies have never really shined there.

I don't know why but if the comparison would have been the last gen WRX vs. this Golf GTi I'm pretty sure the end result would have been the same.

[mitza4rally]

Originally Posted by static

The WRX has always been bit slow on track. Watch old Top Gear reviews and check the laptime board. 4wd Subies have never really shined there.

I don't know why but if the comparison would have been the last gen WRX vs. this Golf GTi I'm pretty sure the end result would have been the same.

The WRX wasent design to go fast on a circuit , the scubi was made to be fast on a rally stge and it dose-it very good .

[TomCat]

I think Plato missed the point of the Lotus. But he owns a Turbo, so little wonder he prayed on the few faults with the Lotus that a Boxster provides.

Pretty boring episode, as others said. Was really disappointed with the Nascar segment. It would have been cool to see Tiff drive on a real super speedway at full tilt. Not following some pace car in a beginner car and course.

Most of the rest of the episode I can't remember. It's been a couple hours since I watched it.

Oh, right, the GTi. Very good car, just wish they were reliable in America.

[markmartinfan]

I am an American and have been a NASCAR fan for about 15 years. After watching the NASCAR part of the latest episode I noticed a number of things Tiff said which were either misleading of factually wrong.

The races tend to be about 3-4 hours in length, not 2-3 hours.

The engines are not 6.0L V8s, the engines are 5.7L Pushrod, carburated V8s which usually redline between 10000 and 11000 RPM.

What Tiff actually did to drive a NASCAR style Stock Car was go to the Walt Disney World Speedway location of the Richard Petty Driving Experience. The car used by Tiff at RPDE was likely a NASCAR race car at one point, by the looks of the car I'd say it's from about 1998. The cars RPDE use are detuned down to about 600 horsepower and likely have a setup with a significant amount of understeer so no one spins into the wall.
Top NASCAR teams don't publish dnyo test results, but it is believed they make about 850 horsepower.
The car he drove at RPDE was not race spec.

At two (Daytona and Talladega) of the 22 tracks NASCAR races on they use a Restrictor Plate on the engine which cuts the power down to about 400 horsepower. Most people complain about Restrictor Plates but they are necessary due to the 220+ MPH speeds these cars were reaching on those two tracks in the 1980s and the crash in 1987 when Bobby Allison's car nearly flew into the stands.
At all other NASCAR tracks they do not use Restrictor Plates and the drivers can take advantage of the full 850 HP the engines produce.

The track he drove on was not a NASCAR track nor was it similar to most NASCAR tracks.
Walt Disney World Speedway is 1 mile in length with a maximum banking of 10 degrees in turn 1 and less in the other turns.
On the other hand, Daytona is 2.5 miles long and has a maximum banking of 31 degrees in the corners.

[ravana]

So a friend noticed a big rock (diamond ring) on Vicki's ring finger in the Subie segment.

I guess she's gonna get hitched to the Studio director dude from TG??

[roaming]

I think the Jaguar XF and the Citroen C5 are the two most interesting 4 door saloons I have seen lately. As long as the quality is good I think I could quite happily own a C5 with the fancy suspension. The Jaguar is out of my price range though.

[Aston Martin]

Anyone else spot the keyring?

[POWERRR!!]

That NASCAR segment was sh*t! I was expecting a pretty good follow up considering that same segment last week was actually pretty good. I thought Tiff would get to drive in an actual race car with JPM or something, but NO - all he got to drive was some f*cking Disney ride!

[BlueMan]

What strikes me as the main problem lately is a blatant lack of budget. Sure it wa nice that they did their nascar thing last week and I thought it brought an interesting to it, but really Tiff driving the nascar should have been put into that episode. Seems to me that they're having to stretch the material pretty thin. If this had been TopGear they would have had the budget to enter him into a lower category stock car race and crash....