Top Gear - S10 EP7 - 25th November, 2007 - Discussion

[vexor]

Jeremy, Richard and James celebrate 40 years of British Leyland by reviewing three of their cars that aren't that bad. Also features a review of the Aston Martin DBS, Jennifer Saunders as the 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' and we ask: whatever happened to the beach buggy?

....

[obdr]

Instead of all these "Top Gear Specials" where they go off to America or Africa they need to do this:

Todays Top Gear is another special. Its another challenge and this time, its quite serious. You see, James, Hammond and I are headed to the infamous Nurburgrin..........

You each have a budget of $60,000. Using that, you must purchase a vehicle, drive it from the studio to the Nurburgring, attend a 3 day advanced drivers course, spend one day afterwards lapping the 'Ring for practice with Sabine and then the three of you will each do two timed laps of the 'Ring. The one with the best average lap time wins the challenge. You must then drive your cars back to the studio as quickly as possible.

Rules:

1. Your car must be currently in production.
2. Your car must be street legal
3. Your car must cost no more then $60,000. You are allowed to use whatever money you save on new tires for the 'Ring but these tires must be the same type as comes fitted standard to your car. No racing slicks.
4. No performance modifications to your car are allowed other then fitting fresh tires assuming you have the money left over to do so.
5. Your car should be well balanced. It should be the perfect balance between daily driver and weekend trackday car as you must drive it from the studio to the 'Ring and then back again.
6. Your car must be able to hold 4 passengers in reasonable comfort.

The slowest average lap time will be returning from the 'Ring driving a Volkswagon Beatle with 3 school children as passengers!!! The Stig will drive your "Ring car home for you. The other two will lose points for every minute they lose to the Stig on the way back to the studio. Points will also be lost for worst average fuel economy.

The goal of this challenge: To determine the ideal car for the man who has a family, can have only one car, and enjoys the weekend trackday from time to time. So the car should get good fuel economy, seat 4 passengers, and be ready for light to moderate trackday fun at least one weekend a month.

[vexor]

^^^ this is not part of the episode

[martin100]

Again, doesn´t sound too interesting but TG always knows how to make it exciting. Last episode was great aswell! Esp. the M5 Touring vs E63 T comparison

[Svensson]

The DBS feature was boring IMO. Jeremy should've driven it on the road, if he thinks it's so unfit for the track. Chris Harris's review of this car was a lot more interesting and to the point.

The underwater test was hilarious though... and nice drift by Jeremy in the Rover on the Mira skid-pad!

[vexor]

what an.... unorganized episode

felt more like they glued it all together about 2 min before the episode actually aired

features were fine, but it just felt like a boring episode compared to the other ones

[-Akshay-]

Omg! this was one of the funniest episode ever.

[fordgt84]

is it just me or have top gear forgotten how to review a car? funny enough only may actually explains a car properly (when given the chance)...clarkson always goes on about shit u can't engineer into a car like 'passion', 'soul', being a thoroughbred and all that shit and it seriously ticks me off...and then they do all these 1 in a million races... who in the hell here is going to race a man strapped with a rocket to his back?, it might be the most entertaining car show, but there are other ppl who do a much better job in reviewing cars

[stmoritzer]

just watched the BL challenge over lunch break, LMAO - one of the funniest episodes ever.

AM review wasn't that good, some action on the runway, but me loving the AM's didn't want to listen to some of the truth JC was saying :bah:

[graywolf624]

The Aston Martin bit was a bit boring honestly. How about some more power slides? I guess I felt like it was missing some of the Top Gear Penache and seemed like it was just thrown together at random.

The british leyland bit was good but predictable. Still I wished theyd taken that nissan through all the tests with the Brits. The parking break bit was hilarious as was Jermey's doors falling off. Not typical car fare but probably the best bit of the show.

The star in the reasonably priced car is startng to pique my interest. It seems weird that just like last season suddenly in the second half all the drivers are quicker, even people who have never been on the track.

I must have missed the part about the beach buggy?