[12x03] November 16th, 2008

[veyya]

Hrm... What do I say?
Since I'm not in the UK and I can't use torrents, the first bit I saw was the blender on youtube while searching for the whole episode. It had me in stitches the entire time, really.
When I finally did get my hands on the entire episode, the audio was out. Oh, wonderful.
I was a bit disappointed at the lack of car review, since those do add a bit of seriousness to it, but James' Scandinavian trip was a relatively decent substitution. It was a bit more... Car-y than I liked (motorsport isn't my thing, even if I do enjoy watching Jezza flog something around the track), but it was a good insight into how things work in that part of the world, and I for one was pretty proud of Captain Slow. I hope he doesn't completely lose his sedateness, though. It brings just that tiny bit of balance to the trio.
The Avantime was great as well, I was convinced that they were going to put jet-engines in the back or something, but they were actually smarter than that for once. Until it caught fire, of course.
Am I too late for this kind of critiquing?

[gert'n'ernie]

Overall, not great but not terrible either.

Chair car: 5 minute Filler, should have been somewhere in the middle.
News: Fairly entertaining but not up to it's usual standard, tired from all that money making at the Top Gear live show perhaps? (No news outtakes on the web page this week, was that really all there was?).
Finland: Saved the program really, should have been longer, more of Mika would have been good. Why not have him down for a blast round the track.
Blender: Amusing but ever so pointless. Reminded me of the James Bond car they tried to make (first series I think, and what happened to the boffin who did all the work on that one?)
Avantime: Premise was good but they didn't really seem into it much, bit half hearted.

Report card would read: Nice try but could have (and has) done better.

[Tarpic]

The correct minimum is 12½ hours.
The law states a minimum of 30 driving lessons (25 minutes each) of which you are allowed to have four during one day and only two lessons can be combined.

If you had two hour driving lesssons for a B-license the instructor broke the law!

I think my memory failed me on this one. It was 2 years ago so either I remembered it wrong or..

The second phase though is quite a rip-off. It's about 2 hours of theory, 1 hour of economical/ecological driving with an instructor and 2 hours on a skidpan. All for about 300€. That is if you have your own car for the skidpan. (70€ extra if you have to rent).

Mika really should've have gone around the track.

[pitdog]

Good show, 9/10 coz im generous today. Marky Mark - well, kinda lame - how to make interesting a movie promo about another movie, where a cop's family gets killed, so then, surprise surprise, the copper decides to make justice, lots of shooting, shouting and explosions ensue blah blah blah....booring. But even this was ok thanx to Jezza and his not that scripted phrasing.
The chair - some funny bits (Hamsters comments), tuning malarkey not bad - usual fooling around. News segment was good. Cannot wait for the next fix.

[Labcoatguy]

"SISU" on your license plate...yay or nay?

[segfault]

I'd liked to have seen a bit more of that "brazilian job"...

Yep, she was a looker! "Pics or it didn't happen."

[bmw745ion19s]

Pretty average,

News was the same as usual

I thought M.W. was a great star, one of my favorites besides Hugh Grant & Simon Cowell as far as being entertaining, I liked him making fun of Tom Cruise.

Blender bit was kind of silly and seems like an old idea.

Captain slow and Mika bit was nice. Probably by far the best part of the show. Wish they would have done more with Mika on track.

The challenge was interesting (trying to give it the benefit of the doubt lol) although you would think the very first thing they would do is upgrade the motor as others have said and how do they expect them to come close with that POS minivan wanna-be in the first place? thats not a challenge, its impossible lol unless you want to drop $100,000 in it.

Id give it a 6/10 for Top Gear

[kaamakazii]

OMG, I was in reno nevada just about the time this was being filmed. I could have seen them and not even noticed! I guess it would be hard not to notice them revving their engines causing all the cars to go bonkers! Hahahaha. I love this show!

[WorldB]

In my opinion this is the weakest episode of the series so far

It wasn't bad, it just wasn't anywhere near up to usual TG standards. Marky Mark was boring, far too American, and smelt of arrogance (not the good Clarkson kind either)

The Avantime challenge had so much promise, but it just failed to deliver. it was too short, and frankly a bit dull

The news section was unremarkable as well, so much so that i can't remember it

The best part was the (agreeably pointless) blender part! Hilarious!

That tells you something about the episode as a whole though - it almost seemed shoved in because the rest of the ep was so average

5/10

[daz_far]

Someting that caught my attention was the x5 brochure. What a pitiful range of colours. I wouldve expected better from BMW, come to think of it, anytime i saw one on the road I can only remember seeing it in black or silver. When jeremy comes to power, he should ban car colour ranges of this lunacy, or lack thereof.

[Cancun]

Hi,

any idea what really was the matter with the Avantime 'improvements'?

I mean ok, the test track is not very demanding on the brakes. So while those huge discs would have made a huge difference on the Nürburgring, it probably wasn't such a smart idea for staying in Surrey. And a bad tire choice might go a long way to explain that it actually slowed down after the first set of modifications.

I'd have sworn the racing tires would correct that though and make it actually go noticeably faster than 'stock'.

Maybe the gearing was screwed up because of the bigger tires?

(and for the foreign language speakers amongst us: wtf is a Brazilian job?)

[Cobol74]

NSFW

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_waxing

[daz_far]

NSFW

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_waxing

that explains that Will Anderson joke i heard

...when they dont have hair on them they're Brazil nuts

[tgbuddy]

I enjoyed watching Richard testing Toyota's latest invention. However, I can't see what's so good about the Avantime.

[Buffy_09]

However, I can't see what's so good about the Avantime.

Other than the space....there really isn't ANYTHING good about it....

T'was kind of the point of the challenge...and made it more...challenging for them.

[tgbuddy]

Other than the space....there really isn't ANYTHING good about it....

T'was kind of the point of the challenge...and made it more...challenging for them.

I wasn't complaining about the challenge. It was quite interesting to watch.