Category: Top Gear Australia

The real Top Gear has returned to UK screens, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have our fun with the local guys. Sure, they may not reach the same lofty standards of the UK originals, but in isolation they’re not too bad.

Isolation is something the Steve and Warren find themselves surrounded by tonight when they take two city runabouts—Fiat 500 and Smart Fortwo—on an outback challenge. Tackling the 620 kilometre Oodnadatta Track probably seemed like a good idea before they left, but was it a great road trip or a disaster waiting to happen?

Does your car make you more attractive? We’ll be given an insight tonight with some scientific analysis measuring women’s responses to various cars.

James and Steve take a ’79 Land Cruiser to the Devil’s Alley 4WD proving ground and face it off against an ’09 Patrol.

Gary Sweet will be thrashing the Proton around the TGA test track.

So, will you be watching Top Gear Australia tonight, or, now that Jeremy, Richard and James are back on the air, will you give it a miss?

On schedule, the new World of Top Gear exhibition opened on Friday at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, near Southampton.

From the World of Top Gear page on the Beaulieu website:

“Ever wondered what happened to the amphibious Toyota, the Alfa/Saab stretch limo and the Reliant Robin rocket that were drowned/cut in half/fired into space by Jeremy, James and Richard in the good name of Top Gear?

Since not even the dodgiest used car dealers would buy them, we’ve collected all the battered, modified and generally ruined cars from the world’s biggest car show and gathered them together in… the Top Gear Enormodrome!

Take a look around the cars from the challenges, get a rare behind-the-scenes view into the show’s production office, and enjoy clips of some of the best Top Gear moments.”

[via autoblog]

Tonight’s was a run of the mill episode. James drove a Pontiac Commodore around LA and waxed lyrical about Aussie motoring brilliance. His points weren’t entirely convincing, it has to be said.

He also took a new Nissan 370Z for a test drive. This should be the program’s raison d’être. The challenges and mucking around are a bit of welcome hit and giggle, sure, but car reviews are where it’s at for a Top Gear franchise. At least, it should be. James’s review wasn’t bad, by any means, but it wasn’t great. It wasn’t particularly memorable, like Clarkson’s pieces on the Porsche Carrera GT or Mk5 Golf GTI, for example. And, I hate to say it, but his review tonight had a touch of Glenn Ridge about it. Just a bit too nice, a bit too slick and not quite worthy of being taken seriously.

The rest of the show followed a similar path. The lawn mowing challenge with Steve and Warren was okay, but not brilliant.

Turns out the highlight were the two guests, Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones. The latter setting a new lap record around the TG Aus track.

Another pass mark for TGA this week. The main challenge, making an armoured car, did have as many holes in it as the cars by segment end. But it was what it was—a harmless bit of fun. The hosts are interacting better and the show continues to improve.

Steve’s piece on the two Elfins was pretty good value, although he does scream a bit doesn’t he. The production crew deserve yet another mention here, their camera angles and post-production techniques hit the mark perfectly once more. To the cars themselves, there’s no doubt the aural V8 symphony from the Streamliner MS8 is the better sound, but I’d be taking the turbo four powered T5 package every time. It just looks like a proper club racer. Mike Simcoe got the looks of the Monaro right in the late 90s, but his Elfin Streamliner isn’t such a success. Both cars set reasonable times on the track, too, with the T5 being the quickest.

HG Nelson was this week’s guest and he made sure his time on Top Gear Australia was memorable by  being the first celeb to barf up while putting the Bog Standard Car through its paces. Fortunately we didn’t see any vision of the HG heave.

There seems to be a pattern forming here. This was, generally speaking, another very good episode from the TGA lads. More importantly, the hosts are improving. They still have a way to go if their aim is to match the UK masters, but their progression is evident.

Opening the show with a supercar shopping trolley segment is always going to win points with me. And the Audi RS 6 v HSV Sportwagon R8 was plenty entertaining. Steve, I agree the RS 6 sounds too quiet inside the cabin, but, outside, it sounds fantastic! The two tonne Audi also set a cracking lap time around the test track.

Olympic swimmer Leisel Jones was the guest and she also posted a pretty handy lap time. Pleasingly, Warren is getting better at this gig too. You got the feeling that Jones was at ease and she looked comfortable throughout. Well done to Warren as his first interview this series with Mark Skaife was pretty hard to watch.

Other highlights from tonight’s show included Steve teaching James’ dad to drift a Falcon XR8 ute. Steve then tried his hand at drifting a stretch limo— Chrysler 300C style—before having a go in a Mr Whippy van. Unsurprisingly, both were poor drift tools, but the racing truck was more than capable of hanging its arse out.

The weakest link of the episode was the final segment—Warren’s review of the Kia Soul. His delivery was okay. The production values were okay, too. But not giving a definite opinion, or providing a meaningful conclusion just made the whole piece completely worthless.

The last two episodes, though, have shown that Top Gear Australia is marching onwards and upwards. Long may they continue.

After tonight’s episode I think we can say Top Gear Australia has found second gear. This was easily one of their best episodes and probably the best episode to date. The chemistry with the hosts was smooth, natural and the forced behaviour of earlier episodes was pleasantly absent. I have to again compliment the production crew for their camera work and post-production. They’ve been the stars of Series 2 so far, but the on air talent is starting to catch up.

Warren’s piece with the Maserati GTS was well delivered. Sitting in the back with a champagne flute while The Stig thrashed the Italian sportscar around Oran Park was first class revhead entertainment.

The ute piece with Warren and Steve contained some good natured banter and the guys seemed to be genuinely having fun. Of course, the recipe of cutting up a couple of old bangers to make them something they’re not is nothing new. But if the recipe has the right ingredients, it’s still worth doing. Well done lads, you got it just right with this one.

A regular Top Gear segment formula seems to be stunt car training and James Morrison handled this very well. In both senses. His car handling skills were quite handy, and he seemed comfortable in front of the camera, even when his car was almost at right angles to the road.

Anh Do was the guest and apart from his CONSTANT SHOUTING AT THE AUDIENCE he was good value. A good mix of humour and drama mixed in. Warren’s interviewing seems to be improving here.

So, a smooth, almost slick and thoroughly enjoyable episode tonight. Let’s hope this wasn’t a fluke.

A serviceable episode from the lads tonight. I’m yet to be convinced we can expect greatness from the locals, but episode 2 did provide solid entertainment.

The show opened with a piece on the HSV Clubsport R8, which quickly, and thankfully, took a turn for something that sounds truly mad. The brutes from Walkinshaw Performance have strapped a supercharger on the already well powered V8. The symphony of V8 grunt and supercharged torque was music to the ears of anyone who has enjoyed the delights of supercharger whine. The car is good for a mammoth 470kW apparently. Yikes! They ran the car twice on Top Gear Australia test track, first with bling 22 inch wheels, second with moderate bling 20 inch wheels. We all know the theory—lighter wheels are best for performance—but according to Stiggo the smaller 20 inch wheels with more forgiving rubber were over three seconds a lap quicker.

According to the sales data Australians bought more V8s than ever before in 2008. So much for the fuel crisis. This inspired Warren and Steve to build a couple of electric cars on a $3000 budget. Steve took charge of a lightweight Suzuki Mighty Boy, while Warren loaded up an HZ Kingswood wagon with a bunch of regular old car batteries. Steve’s nutball idea to power his car with four cordless drills sounded kind of fun, but it just didn’t work. There were some good laughs here, though.

In the middle of the episode, and from nowhere, it seemed, they fired up a Model T Ford. Fifteen million of Henry’s finest were sold back in the day, a figure that, amazingly, still sees the T in the top 10 selling cars of all time. They look like a bitch to drive, however!

One final challenge for James and Warren was a reverse race around Oran Park raceway. James was at the wheel of a Ford Territory, Warren in a Commodore. All mirrors and windows were covered over, with James relying solely on the Territory’s reverse camera and in-dash screen. While Warren had just the rear window to guide him through the course, littered with obstacles. Okay, so it wasn’t great viewing, but, again, it was good harmless fun.

Ian Moss picked up a (not so) fast car to burn his name in the road as tonight’s guest. He’s a pretty good subject, with some great tales to tell no doubt. But, he’s always been a shy bloke and Warren still has a way to go to put his subjects at ease. Even with his elbow resting on the window sill leading into the main straight, ‘Mossy’ was able to set the second quickest time around the track.

Another nod in the direction of the film and production crews who, so far in Series 2, continue to get the ‘Top Gear look’ just right.

Well, I didn’t mind the return of Top Gear Australia on SBS TV tonight. New host James Morrison was not bad. Actually, for a first up effort he was quite good, even if there is room for improvement.

His opening piece testing the Mitsubishi Evo X was more than reasonable, helped by some very good camera work around Oran Park. Hats off to the production team there.

Thank goodness they got rid of the ‘What were they thinking segment’. That was just plain awful. Pleasantly they didn’t take themselves too seriously about it either.

Steve and James walked us through their test track, which was a nice touch. It certainly gave a better appreciation of the course and did well to highlight the trickier sections that look releatively tame from the couch.

There was a ‘race’ featured in this episode that saw Steve in a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 take on James and Warren on jet ski thingy to see who could get from Melbourne’s CBD to Portsea the quickest. There were some cringey moments in there, but overall I thought it was pretty good. Already you can see the chemistry of the three hosts is working better than it did in Series 1.

‘Skaifey’ was tonight’s guest and I was always a fan of Mark Skaife, especially in his early days, but methinks he took himself a little too seriously in this format. Oh, Warren’s not much better at this interviewing gig than Charlie, so let’s hope he improves with time.

I thought the TV commercial recreation was going to be pretty lame, but it gave me a few laughs and won me over.

When The Stig took the Murci around their test track did anyone else think that footage had been sped up? Or was I just imagining things?

Anyway, the Aussie version of this show is now back on our screens and can be seen for the next seven weeks at 7:30pm every Monday night on SBS. Overall, I thought tonight’s show was better than fair. What did you think?

Just spotted on CarAdvice is news that Top Gear Australia has put out an audience call for its second series. The first recording date is just a few weeks away on Tuesday 7 April. A full list of filming dates is listed below.

Series 2 will premiere on SBS Television on Monday 11 May. Of course, this will mark James Morrison‘s debut with the local cast, joining Steve Pizzati and Warren Brown.

The series will run for a total of 8 episodes, which (presumably) means the last episode will be broadcast on Monday 29 June.

More details on the audience call are available below, or you can simply check out the Top Gear Australia website.