[16x01] January 23rd, 2011

[16x01] January 23rd, 2011


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Felt like good, old fashioned, solid TG to me. Nothing exceptional but all the right ingredients were there. A good track test, a "proper" car review which while slightly silly did tell a great deal about the car (TG mag has been raving about how complete a real world car the Yeti is for some time), News that was funny and felt natural, a SIARPC who was entertaining for once (even though I'm not a fan of the Liverpool accent either) and drove a storming lap, and while I find Hammond's "911 fanboi" thing quite tiresome it was still quite an entertaining segment.

Gave it a 7.

And in case anyone is interested the chopper pilot was Quentin Smith aka Q, a former World Freestyle Helicopter champion. I've seen him on other shows and he's a bit good!
 
8/10.
The Atom v8 review and the race with the bike was good. Skoda Yeti review was OK. I enjoyed the Porsche 911 Segment, the part with the Porsche's and the beetle in the warehouse/studio/hangar/whatever was cool! I was i bit annoyed at Richard calling the beetle "a wretched awful miserable spluttering puttering slow noisy ugly piece of hateful misery and the worst attempt at a peoples car the world has ever suffered":razz:. The 911 vs. Beetle falling from helicopter race was stupid but fun.
 
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I thought it will be quite boring episode, but it wasn't.

Atom - good classic track test. Liked the idea of race with the RR. Also that car will be on the top for a long time. Can't see another car in the near future which can beat this time. Maybe Caterham Levante (is this thing finished yet?).
Yeti - more entertaining than expected. I didn't like the Clio review, but this one was really nice mix of information and fun.
SIARPC - lap looked very quick, so after watching I was expecting a record. Maybe not that good.
911 - downside - it's 911 again (we know there are over 25 versions of this car but, TG doesn't have to test them all). But... I liked this one because I always wanted to do this. Race a car against something falling down. Yes, you can do the math, but with aerodynamic aspects it isn't that easy. Sadly Richard showed us the numbers for a tarmac, so the result was predictable.

9
 
Was okay.

The Yeti review could have been done without the worthless comparisons to a Maybach or Ferrari, and trying to land a helicopter on it. Nice to see TG doing some real world (ish) testing again though.

The new Stig appeared quicker than the old one even just watching the Atom lap, before the time was up. It could be the car or he is more active on the wheel but combine that fact with a) Ben getting suffed regularly by the 5th Gear guys and b) the SIARPC going more than 1s quicker than Tom Cruise does seem to point to the fact that ols Stig wasn't terribly good regardless of Jeremy stating the times in various cars were pretty close.
 
Pretty good episode, I really enjoyed it. The Yeti review was very good and the best bit. The Atom bit was also very good. I think breaking the 4th wall works amzingly good on the show. As shown in these two segments on some occasions. It lightens it all up a bit and it keeps people from complaining about faking stuff. Everyone wins :)
Liked seeing Tiff on the show, if only briefly. I think he deserves to be on Top Gear, it?s really a bit of a shame that he can?t play with the big boys more often ...
Guest - skipped. News - alright. Porsche vs Beetle - good, but I?m going to join into the whole "911s on Top Gear are getting boring"- chant. It was a good, entertaining segment ... but I really don?t want to see the 911 on Top gear anymore. Yes, they are great. Evidence for that are the estimated 20 that I see everyday on the street. There are so many other interesting sportscars ... please stop using the 911 even if at Porsche PR they love you and will send you as many cars that you want. JUST SAY NO.

9 11/10
 
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Nice episode this.

The Atom review was good and the race even exciting.
The Yeti segment was great fun and much better than expected.
Loved also the SIARPC although the guest was a bit no name for me.
Porsche segment was a bit boring but better than I thought.

8/10
 
Was that Porsche v Beetle a rip-off of a car ad [BMW ?] ?
I'm sure Mythbusters did that a year or two ago where they dropped a car from a chopper to time it to land around the same time the other car went by.

Good episode.The i-Player gag at the start was very accurate.Tiff May was funny.
 
A very good episode, better than I had expected and a strong start to the season.

The Yeti and Atom reviews were excellent. I'm not sure how many times you can review the same Porsche with something slightly different added on to it and still make it interesting but Hammond did a decent job. For once I didn't know who SIARPC was but it was alright. I really liked the in-studio part about the Jaguar concept car too.

Hopefully the rest of the season will be this strong. 8/10
 
Was that Porsche v Beetle a rip-off of a car ad [BMW ?] ?
I'm sure Mythbusters did that a year or two ago where they dropped a car from a chopper to time it to land around the same time the other car went by.

Good episode.The i-Player gag at the start was very accurate.Tiff May was funny.

Yes they did and they were testing out the BMW commercial. The hardest part was getting the car wieghted such that it fell flat. So much for BMW's claims of "perfest 50:50 weight distribution"!
 
It was a good episode, but not something very good. James was a bit misplaced in the Atom, but still a good review and wow what a time. Also nice to see Tiff again in TG. Yeti review was alright. The chopper landing was way to much and the poor guy with the 2 tatoos :/. SIARPC um well, to be honest it was quite hard to me to understand John Bishop, but he did a really good time, all thanks to new Tiff Stig? Like the other episode with Tiff as trainer and the star had a really good time. The 911 / beetle part was, I don't know. With more old Porsches it would have been much better.
 
Surely weight distribution has less of an effect than aero dynamics? if one half of the underside catches more air than the other its going start tumbling.
 
I must admit, I was somewhat confused by this episode! I sat down expecting something different. The RT quoted:

At the climax of the Christmas special, in which the TG presenters motored across the desert to Bethlehem, they found there, lying in a stable, not the baby Jesus but a tiny newborn Stig. It was a lovely sight gag and a typically cheeky "on that bombshell..." to end with. For fans, it also signalled that, far from the whole Stig idea going up in flames (after previous incumbent Ben Collins unmasked himself), a new "tame racing driver" would materialise for this, the 16th series of the show, and a million key-rings, figurines and T-shirts would be safe from landfill. Whoever New Stig is, he/she/it gets to grips with a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car tonight, as comedian John Bishop takes to the track. Meanwhile, Clarkson, Hammond and May take on their opposite numbers from Australian Top Gear in a (belated, frankly) car-based version of the Ashes, with contests including rallying, drifting and an Aussie version of double-decker car racing. It's the tyres I feel sorry for.

Anyone know what happened to that segment!?
 
Ariel Atom - great! (I'm a fan of the Atom).
Great great great Atom dogfight and Fast Lap. I love to see cars sliding away and being controlled in such way.

Skoda Yeti - Great information actually, I liked it quite much, though the driving through the building on fire was not great at all. (seriously? make it fun and clearly ironic like everything else, because... 900?... please..).
I'd like to see more reviews of cars I could might even buy at some point, super-mega-hyper-mega-cars make me bored after a while.

Speaking of which: please, please, please, no more 911... I just disconnect my brain and I don't listen, so I end up remembering things like: "this car has a "wsjdhtgsf" horsepower and can do 0-60 in "gdfhejsjeh" seconds, it has a "dgkahrkjh" wheel-drive and costs "gkajtakjwaeh" thousand pounds. Not very informative.
Also, I rejoiced when the tedious 911 was beaten by a gravity-propelled Beetle.

News: Not outstanding, but good, funny and with a bit of properly interesting things.

SIARPC: I found it funny. I didn't care for the lap too much, though (even if he set the lap record). I still have no idea who he is, but I rarely know who SIARPC are, so that's consistent with previous seasons.

Tiff Needell on TG: great! I wish he could appear more often.

The girl behind John Bishop: very nice

Stig growing up: glad it was short. I laughed a bit. Any more and it would have been quite boring.

Sienna Miller in the glovebox. I'm still laughing! fantastic!

8/10
 
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I just skipped through the 911 bit. I wouldn't mind if it was just a review of the new 911, it's just the way it was done. Yes, we KNOW it's not a beetle with mustrad up its bottom!

meh.ro5863.jpg


Thank you for wasting 10 minutes of airtime that could have been more productively used by doing at least a PROPER review of the car. But I guess that's just 911 fanboys for you.
 
8/10.
The Atom v8 review and the race with the bike was good. Skoda Yeti review was OK. I enjoyed the Porsche 911 Segment, the part with the Porsche's and the beetle in the warehouse/studio/hangar/whatever was cool! I was i bit annoyed at Richard calling the beetle "a wretched awful miserable spluttering puttering slow noisy ugly piece of hateful misery and the worst attempt at a peoples car the world has ever suffered":razz:. The 911 vs. Beetle falling from helicopter race was stupid but fun.

love the new gif
 
I am though, genuinely interested about how the did the Sienna Miller gag...cause it had me laughing like an idiot. :D
 
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