New Top Gear season coming Sunday 27 January!
They’re back!
Of course if you live in the colonies, you’ll have to wait several months to see them :-(
Clarkson’s ex explains how she received injunction
Are private lives completely private?
If you were once married to a celebrity what can and should you be able to say in public?
Jeremy Clarkson’s ex-wife Alex Hall found out the hard way when she wanted to write a self-help book about the effects of celebrities on their family’s private lives. Not “salacious”, although it’s been rumored that the two had an affair after he married his current wife, just “a sort of witty self-help book”, Mrs. Hall said.
Clarkson filed an injection a week later… then dropped it once the harm had been done. Although the book is now written and ready for publishing.
Read more:
Found: ~28 year old Jeremy Clarkson at Beaulieu National Motor Museum
Here’s an original video clip, likely from a very early Top Gear (back in late eighties when Clarkson and Needell were mere correspondents). Get a few minutes into it and are surprises to be found…
Incredible… the original Jeremy Clarkson… with hair. And, no… not a copy born and bred on Clarkson Island. The only original Clarkson…. in the world.
And if this is not enough, here is Tiff Needell (note the British pronunciation – “knee-dell”) at the 6:15 mark comparing three Ford Sierra Cosworths (original, Evolution, Group A race car - ranging from 200 to 500 HP)!
The sale referenced is at Beaulieu National Motor Museum. With year-round monthly events as well as the enormous sales in the spring and fall, this is one of the top museums to visit in Britain. Beaulieu is situated in the south of England, in the New Forest between Bournemouth and Southampton, with easy access from London and the Home Counties.
AutoWeek goes drifting in their offices for the holidays
AutoWeek subscribers received a link to the following video today as a holiday gift. It’s cool, and it will undoubtedly be copied right and left. I know now that we’re going to do the same thing with our own RC car.
This was well made… but nothing will beat the time Clarkson drove an actual car into the offices of his company. Right up the street, into the elevators, around the floor, past the meeting rooms and desks. Let’s face it, the *real* Top Gear beats any of the export Top Gears any day and in every way. That’s why Top Gear America Must Die!
Top Gear America Must Die
It’s a sad observation on our society that so many people settle for less. Too many settle for Mustangs with ox-cart suspensions, leaf-spring Corvettes, “careers” behind the counter at Starbucks, a President with no qualifications, a “bridge to nowhere”, speedtraps financing community budgets, giant pickup trucks with no driving dynamics whatsoever, and driving while texting. Cameras take our picture and mail us tickets instead of officers executing the due process of law. Marketing and bobble-head handouts instead of substance and experience. It extends into every-day society: we accept band-aids for our issues, instead of finding fixes. Liberals blame shootings on partisan politics instead looking more closely at failed educational and lax legal systems – then sit back while their ideologue President takes advantage of the tragedy to increase his standing in the polls. It’s more about appearances, instead of function. Pride of image rather than of personal and professional accomplishments. People turn inwards, instead of outwards. We fall into isolationism and appeasement, instead of action. “Exit strategy” instead of “finish the mission”.
Why do we put up with this? Read more
Top Gear season 16 begins!
Season 16 started tonight… that is for those of you who can see it live. Blame it all on BBC… they only let us see old episodes in North America, not the new ones. What’s needed is some sort of modern day Boston Tea Party… to force the redcoats British to give us the show without the taxation of having to wait a year.
Classic Top Gear: Tiff Needell introduces the Toyota Supra TT
Back in the very early days of Top Gear, before the rise of Jeremy Clarkson, Tiff Needell was the host of Top Gear for 14 years, starting in 1987. It was a very different universe in those days from the one we have now: the planets actually circled the sun instead of Clarkson. Most readers probably know Tiff as the host of Fifth Gear, along with co-presenters Jason Plato, Jonny Smith, and Vicki Butler-Henderson (an accomplished driver, as well as an S2000 owner). The show is currently in a 1/2 hour format, and there are two series per calendar year.
We won’t mention Ben Collins, except to say he is so g*dawful bad that he needs to be shown the exit as soon as possible. With no speaking skills, questionable driving skills, total lack of ethics, and certainly no personality whatsoever, why he was hired remains a mystery to viewers worldwide. He’d certainly fit right in with the American Top Gear cast ;-)
But step back in time to the pre-Clarkson Top Gear. The 320 HP Supra TT was new at the time of this recording. Supra enthusiasts will note the European-spec car, with the hood scoop for cooling the turbos and electrically adjustable front spoiler.
Shooting the Stig (spoilers inside!)
A terrific premier this past weekend of the new season of Top Gear. But what about a new Stig? As you know, the Stig(Ben Collins) had walked off of Top Gear, then did a Judas by ratting on the cast and crew. And joining the cast of rival show Fith Gear. Nice guy. Now it’s turn of our favorite trio to figuratively get rid of the Stig.
This was accomplished by an infamous Top Gear Challenge. While in America (where else?), the boys were given the task of learning how to do a drive-by shooting… starting by learning how to rapid-fire handguns. This is after all something you can learn in America a lot easier than you can in the U.K.
The targets were three Stig cut-outs (the actual Stig being unavailable)…
First a scoring system had to be determined. Various parts of the body counted for 5, 10, and 20 points; the part shown below counted for 100 points. Don’t get mad – get even!
The Hamster gets his drive-by shots in…
And of course Jeremy cheated, using an assault rifle instead of the agreed-upon handgun.
All in all a great season opener. We also watched the entire season of Fifth Gear which just ended… that’s another post. But we will say that Ben Collins is the most boring host you could imagine… he was totally useless to the show. In fact detracted from it. He needs to be fired.
Next week: the annual Top Gear Christmas Special. Shot in the Middle East. Where there could well be another shooting…!
Jeremy Clarkson thumbs his nose at Britain’s liberal socialists
As you may have read, Top Gear has taken a lot of heat from the liberal press in Britain over the past year about how unrealistic the cars they test are for the Liberal agenda of reduced emissions and increased fuel economy (at the expense, of course, of personal freedom and mobility). The problem is that the types of cars Top Gears shows us just don’t fit into the master plan of the Socialists for cars that don’t allow people to have any fun.
Jeremy Clarkson obviously thinks they’re bunk.
So to thumb their noses at the liberals, Top Gear created a unique challenge for the premier episode of the new series (15) last weekend. Top Gear challenges have required the threesome to drive across deserts, build all sorts of ridiculous cars, launch one on a space shuttle, race buses around a racetrack, and worse. This time, Jeremy is given a challenge to drive the “2nd highest-sold fiberglass car in Britain after the Corvette”.
The only thing that would have made this perfect was to put Nancy Pelosi in the passenger seat!
A couple more tests like this one, and they’ll need to release the Jeremy Clarkson Obituary: