[18x06] March 4th, 2012

[18x06] March 4th, 2012


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I have to give it a 6. I was kinda dissapointed. If you have seen clarksons powered up, youve already seen the brutus, its an impressive car for sure, but well.. some of the excietment was gone.

And in the trackday car segment. Same story, we have already seen the caterham and the X-bow. And on that note, i dont get why clarkson picked the X-bow when he wasnt that impressed about it in his, i think it was supercar showdown. I thought he would show up in the atom, he's like a little kid every time he mentions it. Kudos to james for showing up in the caterham though, not often he actually gets away with picking the best car.

The episode was alright, but i need something fresher :)
 
I feel there was one thing missing. Jezza tested the Brutus and that Meteor-powered Bentley. But not even so much as a mention of the crazy Aussie who put a fully fledged, still fully supercharged Merlin in a '57 Chevy?! I want to see THAT monster on the track. It's got tires wider than Jeremy in the back, yet I bet it'd absolutely trash them without a second thought.
 
Maybe the shipping cost for the Merlin in '57 would've been too high?
 
I thought it was great, but I felt it was lacking substance or something. I don't know, this one didn't really blend in well for us, or maybe because I wasn't paying enough attention to it.
But still great. 8/10.

I have to agree with you. For a lot of these episodes in this series I've been left wanting more, although most of the episodes have been indeed wonderful. So it just doesn't make sense to me but... I don't know. I can't explain it.
 
i hope they do a Harry Potter-related segment one of these days. =P

anyways, on 2nd viewing, i still give it a 9.
Probably an 8.5, to be exact.
 
After watching this latest ep and knowing what's coming next week, I think it's safe to say this has been just about my favourite season of Top Gear. (Not including specials)
Season 7 is runner up.
 
The intro about the track day cars was a copy pasta from another episode I swear at first I thought I opened the wrong file

Yeah it was, almost word for word from season 15 episode 2. the one where they go to Germany with the 190, M3, and Ford. I thought the same thing, it set a bad tone for me for the whole episode, until May's goggles slapped him in the face. :lol:
 
Film was great fun - though I somehow feel that they could've made more out of the whole thing. Weird choice of cars, or rather engines. Morgan has around 100, X-Bow IIRC around 250 and the 7 has 500hp ...

An R500 has 500bhp PER TONNE. 500bhp in a Seven would be both mental and scary! The Duratec in a 500 is a fairly manic 263bhp. Still plenty, but puts it very much in a. Similar bracket to the X-Bow.
 
I just noticed some unfair "top gear maths" in the track day car segment. According to Jeremy, the Caterham has an engine from the "Ford Galaxy people carrier" and that makes the X-bow better, because its engine "comes from the Golf GTI".

That people carrier engine has been fiddled with by Caterham Powertrain and revs to 8500rpm. I could probably find a VW group people carrier with the 2.0T too if I could be arsed to.

Top Gear math is as accurate as Bush's description of Irak's nuclear arsenal. Maybe a bit more accurate, actually.
 
Hard to say if I'm rating this 9 because it was everything a TG episode should be (sans an interesting guest) or because I'm relating it to prior horrible episodes (India, S17 etc - heck, even the stupid stunt thing the other week). I see a few people have commented that Richard Hammond was bearable this week so another +1 for that (I could always watch him on mute anyway... ;) ). The Morgan had my entire family in stitches. :D
 
Insanely jealous of lil Dicky or anyone else who?s driving about in a 3 wheeled Morgan.
Regardless of speed, you can?t possibly take life seriously again after driving around in that thing.
The ?drive to work in cold & rain? is situation normal for anyone who rides two wheels to work everyday. It?s just that bike clothing has work through most of the shortcomings.

Talk elsewhere of James?s driving prowess, kinda falls short when you do see him in amongst others in between ripple strips & sand traps ? spatial awareness.

I don?t understand aeroplane engines ? why do they need to be so large (displacement) & powerful when all they do is rotate an air blade at high speed, it?s not like that would present a discernable load?

Didn?t Jezza looks crammed into that Crossbow?
From what I?ve heard, KTM apparently has the youngest average age throughout it?s design & development team than any other (motorcycle) manufacturer. Which I suppose might translate to products like the Crossbow & the general styling cues in a lot of their current range. Check their product ads for their road based products on YouTube ? lots of blue smoke & irreverent behaviour there?.
 
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I'm part way through watching it a second time, this time in HD. I've forgotten what score I clicked on after my first viewing, but I hope I gave it 9/10 - it really is a great episode. I'd give it 10/10, except if I did that I'd have to vote 11/10 for episodes like Botswana, the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle and maybe Vietnam. All those ones were fairly expensive epics, which makes this more home-grown episode unexpectedly surprising.
 
Ya know what would be nice to see?
Morgan 3-Wheeler vs. Can-Am Spyder.

I thought the R500 had a windscreen and a roof as an option?

Loved watching the Stig frantically muscling Brutus round the track. Never seen him that animated before.

It's episodes like these, with specialty cars as opposed to reviews of everyday cars, that TG does incredibly well with both petrolheads and mainstreamers. They would do well to remember that.
 
Have to admit originally gave this an 8, oh how wrong I was, really deserves much more after watching it again, another great episode in a great series.
 
Why do they, of late, stick Hammond with cars that don't really belong into the group tests? The Threewheeler is not meant to be a trackday car.

That said, I love the thing to death. Nothing like passing a finishing line backwards (except maybe backwards and in a big ball of fire).

Or I would love it if it weren't so absurdly overpriced. It's probably even worth the 30,000 in terms of the labour and craftsmanship and all, but wasn't the point of the original Threewheeler to be a cheap laugh? It should definitively have gone on the show but it needn't have been within the trackday car group test.

The news: I wonder if Jeremy had something specific in mind when he said the last time he had been wrong about has been in 1974. Loved the Audi running gag, they should keep this up indefinitely.

What I found strange was when Jeremy compared smacking children to trackdays, which he had made very clear he thinks are a lot of fun. Adults who have fun smacking children are sick bastards who should be thrown in jail, as I'm pretty certain even Jeremy himself would agree. And it was a carefully edited segment, too, not some spontaneous gaffe on a live show.

because how the hell can the Brutus be road legal?

Doesn't it use a more or less original Chassis from ages gone by? I think that might help a lot, because if you manage to convice the T?V guy in question it's not a new vehicle constructed by you, but actually an 80-odd year old, slightly modified veteran, it might only have to adhere to the legislation from back then.

I think you have to grease the valves every so-and-so miles, or it could be like a diesel locomotive where oil is very gradually allowed to seep out onto the components.

You're right. These pushrod valvetrains do not need that much lubrication anyway. There is no quickly spinning camshaft. There are no plain sleeve-type bearings that would need high oil pressure. And back in the day, nobody was bothered about a few drops of oil spoiling the pilot's face, let alone the environment.

The better siarpc guests seem to have dried out. Who has some laying around?
Just off the top of my head:
Hugh Laurie, supposed to be a huge car nut
Juan Pablo Montoya
Angus & Malcolm Young
Phil Rudd, come to think of it - remember him drifting that 928 over that frozen lake in the "Let there be rock" film back when?
Any of the regular Simpsons cast
John Cusack
Martina Navratilova
Billy Gibbons (plz bring Chica)
Jerry Seinfeld
Nicholas Cage
Flea
Eddie Griffin

Obama anyone?
Might be entertaining but is he a car nut?
 
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