[14x05] September 8th, 2008

[Viper007Bond]

http://www.finalgear.com/shows/fifthgear/14/5/

[Cobol74]

10 Just for the scoobys and Colin.

[ahpadt]

G.I.E.V contest prize!!!

[Mauren]

9/10 5th Gear went up a few notches after this episode.

I find tiff to be so fake.

Overall a phenomenal episode. Good basic car reviews and the scene with Senna's nephew was great.

TG has gotten to big for itself.
This FG episode was a good example of it.

[Handonam]

the first segment with tiff and jason, i was like "wow that was it?"

but then those girls, that made it look so fun haha.

Colin's car looked pretty aggressive

Challenger, woo that looks like a nice car

No johnny? poor guy

[Viper007Bond]

10!

I thought it was gonna be overpacked with stuff to the point where stuff was too short, but that seemed like 2 hours of stuff!

Tiff/Jason segment was a bit "meh" (interesting, but...) at first and I thought I was going to hate the girls bit ("oh boy, another stupid stunt just to have pretty girls") but man oh man was I laughing my ass off

Tom's SUV review was quite interesting

Bruno was awesome and a really good reviewer!

RIP Colin McRae and a good tribute to him

I loved that Tom gave the Challenger a chance rather than bashing it for being American and low tech (it's nice to actually see some non-bashing for once, i.e. Top Gear)

Shootout was a bit boring as I don't like those kinda cars, but Vicki did good even though the cars were boring

The John Prescott was alright and I bet it'd be more interesting if I actually knew who the guy was

[Wizegui]

A bit too much stuff in my opinion. They could have cut out at least two of the segments. The show just isn't the same without Johnny :S Overall, a very good episode.

[benow]

Excellent. Among the best ever Fifth Gears, imo. Nice to have lots of fast. Odd to slam the Forrester before the segment with all the Subaru's in the Colin McRae tribute. It's time to demand better driving skills of politicians

[Scooby5]

Could have done without 2-Jags completely, maybe padding out the balance or adding a Jonny section. Actually, i think the rest was in balance already, the right amount of time on each part so swapping out 2-Jags for a "consumer" segment might have been a better way to go.

Being overseas, it was good to see Colin's tribute that i have so far missed. I would certainly have been there so i hope the guy that bought my STi was.

Pity the weather sucked for the GT-R shootout........but it was maybe the weather that played into the GT'Rs hands by slowing down a rear-happy 911.

9/10. 2-Points demoted for 2-Jags with one extra for Colin's section, but i'm a bit bias

[awdrifter]

IS-F vs M3 - The first part was good. I was enjoying seeing them thrashing the cars around the track. I remeber Tiff saying the transmission gets confused when you're sliding, so I guess they either fixed that or Jason's better at drifting it.

Forester - Damn, the new Forester is ugly. And why didn't they use the 2.5L turbo instead of the n/a? With a manual trans and the turbo engine, they Forester should be just as good as the Freelander.

Bruno Senna's review - that was pretty cool. Even though they revied the GTR already, it's nice to see another perspective.

Vicki's Subaru meet - it's not bad, the lap in Colin McRae's rally car definitely saved it. That car looks so tail happy.

Challenger - That was great. Nice to see a not as biased review of an American car. The Challenger should handle quite a bit better than the normal Charger, so considering it's size, it's not bad. The engine sounds great too. Too bad they don'te offer a manual.

VXR vs Focus - I'm a little bit surprised, I guess the Focus just handles that much better.

This ep is very packed, and I like it. If they would take out the stupid girls "test" segment, and give a bit more length to the GTR and hothatch segment it would've been great. I would've gave this ep a 9, but the girl's segment and the final celebrity segment are really boring, so I only voted 8.

[b_tapper]

I think it was my fav episode yet.
Hard to ask for a better episode, the McRae tribute, Godzilla vs 911, hell even the girls segment was decent.
I wish the McRae segment was a lot longer though.

[BFIFTY8]

Originally Posted by awdrifter

Forester - Damn, the new Forester is ugly. And why didn't they use the 2.5L turbo instead of the n/a? With a manual trans and the turbo engine, they Forester should be just as good as the Freelander.

If you bothered to check, You'd know that a 2.5 Turbo is not available in England.

http://www.subaru.co.uk/Subaru_co_uk....qed?menuid=M0

[awdrifter]

That sucks. I just checked on that site, you can still get the 2.5L Turbo with the MY08 Forester. So I guess they dropped it for MY09 then.

[4G92Lancer]

Enjoyed it all. I did like the way Tiff acted like he was out of his depth and had no control...

Did anyone else notice the strange little stuffup? This weeks question refers to a clip they didn't show...the Reliant Robin restoration they mentioned at the end of last weeks episode (where, incidentally, it shows the answer to this weeks question).

[Goldec]

Loved it
The lady-friend test was great!

[rps]

Originally Posted by Cobol74

10 Just for the scoobys and Colin.

I was also going to give 10 (because of Bruno Senna and the GT-R versus 911 Turbo which was the highlight of a good program) but then the last segment with the politician happened and I reduced to 9.

[static]

The studio conversation was so forced and there was way too much of it in the episode.

[salguod]

I gave it a 9. It was filled with some really good segments, in particular the Mcrae (which I did want to last longer), and Bruno Senna's test of the GTR and 911. The cinematography is definitely much better too.

I liked the M3 Vs IS-F as well, I find it quite mesmerizing to watch Tiff and Plato driving with that amount of skill round the track.

One thing though, reasonably sized gripe, but I preferred the studio bits of the last couple of series than this one. It seems that Tom and the other bloke that I can't remember the name of seem to be trying to out do each other in terms of ego, showing off a bit too much for my liking, and also talking down to the viewers not talking with them as it were.

Finally, where was Jonny?

[ahpadt]

M3 v IS-F - Good. ( @ Tiff's LUNATIC driving)
GTR v 911 Turbo - Very good.
Colin McRae - Meeeeh, ok.
Challenge - Good.
Land Rover thing v Subaru thing - Decent.
Astra v Focus - Meh, ruined the ep a bit.
Jag - Crap.

[AJ888]

Again, it suffered from too much being crammed into the ~42 minutes. Take the Jag feature - we saw Prescott doing slow laps, then magically after a spot of tea putting in fast laps. When JYS taught James May how to drive fast, part of the reason it worked was we saw him getting gradually better and better as he took on board his instruction. That was completely missed out here.

Freelander Vs. Forester - why the hell test a MT against a AT? As he said in the studio bit after - it was the almost the same as the Freelander elsewhere, just the autobox let it down, but that's all he kept going on about. I used to like Tom's reviews but as of lately, they have no subtlety and he says if he loves or hates a car within the first 10 seconds of the review. The Dodge showed the other extreme.

Enjoyed Tiff & Plato's bit, but it would have worked better as one item. The first bit had barely got going before we moved onto something else. McRae tribute was fine but, and I figure some people will disagree with me here, VBH's emotion seemed a bit fake.

Err, what else did we have? Oh yeah the Bruno Senna piece was good, shame the day they filmed it was so bleak. Guess they can't be blamed for that - I'd imagine there wasn't much flexibility in the filming date. Hot hatch shoot-out was alright, but doesn't the Focus look very ordinary in silver.

The episode contents should have made for an brilliant episode. It didn't live up to the sum of it's parts, and so it's a 7 from me.

Finally the studio bits are annoying - the set is better, but the presenters act like a pair of plonkers. Their impressions aren't funny, their banter seems forced and the way they proclaim every film they show to be the best ever, or have the best drivers in it, or they are more knowledgeable about this or that than anyone or 'wasn't that incredible - you wouldn't get that anywhere else' - comes across as very arrogant and spoils the show a bit for me. Can't they just accept that people will watch both FG and TG, and stop trying to get one up on the TG crew. The FG audience aren't thick - they can make their own minds up about which they prefer.