[03x14] April 11, 2019 - Funeral for a Ford

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Interesting stuff in the documentary, it will be interesting to see where it goes from here actually. Though I wonder if this means we could see another series of The Reassembler.
I was thinking along the same lines. I've enjoyed most of the guys' extracurricular activity, so to speak, but especially the shows James does! :)
 
There's crossover for sure, but they are a good bit different in size. From a personal review perspective, despite rave reviews I actually thought the latest model was a downgrade. Quality dropped significantly with the move to Valencia, as did materials with the desire for a global car for the US as well as Europe. They also got too damn big (particularly wide) due to the demands of the US market.

If you want to regularly move four people though, or need a big estate, the Mondeo is still a better bet than the Focus and it always was, just as the Cortina was that bit bigger than an Escort.
I've recently been trying to explain to a young guy I know who doesn't like Fords (well, he has grudging respect for the Focus RS) how in the U.K., you always had some good Fords, while here in North America, we had junk for so, so long. I tell him about the Cosworths and such and I don't think he gets how massively popular they were. And now all we'll have are pickups and SUVs. :/
 
I gave it an 8.

The Ford segment went on too long and there was no time for conversation street chat (one of my favorite parts). I get it - the end of an era, not only for the show format but also for performance saloon cars in many markets, having been replaced by MPVs, mini-MPVs, city cars and the like. But things change, and history has a way of repeating itself.....
 
But things change, and history has a way of repeating itself.....

With many cities already vowing to ban all internal combustion cars in the next couple decades, this time it might be for good and won't repeat itself...
 
Wow. As everyone else has said, great, emotional episode. Despite knowing they were signed for a 4th season, they definitely had me convinced it was over and I was shocked at my reaction to that news. I very clearly remember the first episode I saw in 2004 and I’ve loved it all throughout—Jesus, 15 years...

This season was utterly fantastic.
 
I finally got to watch it... and I was highly, highly impressed.

I haven't been on the Top Gear / TGT train for as long (damn oceans) as some people but I saw my first episode (Ronny Wood/The Peel P50) on BBC America, and I was absolutely floored. I had to have it. Everything they've ever done.

And so the hunt went. If it was on BBC America in my basement, I watched. If not, I had a media player going through every episode, every season on one monitor or TV while I played video games, did homework or did anything in my room/house. Those three were my company in my house for the first year before I started to know people when I moved. Then they were my company again for another year when I moved again and had to make new friends. They came with me to Australia, and joined me there again (where I paid a ridiculous amount to 'rent' a PC at an internet cafe to download and convert the "vietnam" series into PSP playable format). I drove in a shitty little van around the entire Australian continent, watching them rag on about Communistical cars, and drive out of landing craft in a small Ford hatchback because it's all I had when it was a night after driving and there was nobody around. There was something so special about watching them ride motorbikes in Vietnam while in the literal middle of the outback, in the back of a van, nobody else around for miles. It was also kinda dangerous in hindsight, as if I'd been bit or something I would have been definitely "quite dead". But they were there, touring Australia with me.

I realize very few people are going to see this, "and I don't care if they don't read it", but Top Gear and The Grand Tour - So May, Hammond and Clarkson, and the shows' crew members over the years - have had an extremely positive effect on my life.

This show gets an 11. My extended family are all English northerners, and so I understood the company car thing. Even without the real personal attachment to the cars, watching that was exactly perfect. It's a shame that they're ending the tent now, I really think they've rounded into good form this last season. I hope there's a possibility it comes back. Or even if it's a one-on-one-off seasonal thing. I'm going to miss it, it's really been the one show I've looked forward to every week, year for ages. I'm not giving it the rating because 'its the end' - I was giving it Top Marks when the doc shows were done. It was the best episode of The Grand Tour in my opinion. This or the Jim Clark show. But I mildly digress.

End of an era. I was reading through the replies mildly mocking the "oh they're not seriously tearing up... are they?" posts ... then I started to write this ..uhh... essay and found moments when my eyesight was getting a little cloudy too. Reminiscing about the adventures they've been on, the adventures I've been on while carting them around on a laptop or a PSP, leaving it on in an otherwise silent empty house just to get some warmth into the place. Watching James get egg on his face because his BL hydrogas suspension wasn't quite up to the task.

If anybody from the cast or crew see this, please accept my most sincere thanks for what you have all done over the years. It can't have been easy putting together such a show, week after week and year after year for 20 years. You have enriched lives by bringing escapeism and joy. At the very least, I can guarantee you've enriched one life... "That man over there" - Me.
 
Finally got around to watching this one. Damn, that was a kick in the feels from a racehorse.

They've been an integral part of a third of my life and more importantly led me to FinalGear where I have made some of the best friends and created some of the best memories a guy could ever wish for.

Thanks, chaps. Or should that be CHuMps?
 
the end of an era, not only for the show format but also for performance saloon cars in many markets, having been replaced by MPVs, mini-MPVs, city cars and the like. But things change, and history has a way of repeating itself.....

If you follow the EV (electric vehicle) world, which is going through a massive surge to the mainstream right now (since not only is the technology maturing at an incredible rate but also things like EU regulations require manufacturers to provide a certain number of pure EV cars in the product range by 2020), then you would see that ironically its all about the performance halo-effect vehicles (Tesla, Volvo Polestar, Porsche, Aston Martin, Rimac...) while the Germans are lagging a bit behind with plans for expensive SUVs in the next year or two.

Most of the affordable stuff is coming out of China, with Volkswagen and some others also looking to that market (again, in a year or two).

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Honda Urban EV (unfortunately, it looks a bit more conventional than the concept in this link).

Edit: having looked again at images of the updated Honda e (as it's now called) I've revised my opinion from "conventional" to "meh". The original had a kind of funky aggressiveness (those "hooded" front lights), now it looks like someone just shoved a brick up its backside...

From stylishly rounded square-cut to too much roundy-roundy and somehow not proportioned right (e.g. the lights are too close together and the bumpers stick out too much).
 
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Edit: having looked again at images of the updated Honda e (as it's now called) I've revised my opinion from "conventional" to "meh". The original had a kind of funky aggressiveness (those "hooded" front lights), now it looks like someone just shoved a brick up its backside...

From stylishly rounded square-cut to too much roundy-roundy and somehow not proportioned right (e.g. the lights are too close together and the bumpers stick out too much).

It's awful! It looks like the kind of vehicle Mr. Bean would push out of the way with his car.
 
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