Top Gear: It’s Biblically Good

By Melissa Bratcher

With the American version of Top Gear on the horizon, there is no better time to discuss what makes the British version such a brilliant show. The American version is destined to be dreadful—partially because America makes crap cars. European cars are just better.

Top Gear is a car show for people who don’t particularly care about cars (though after watching for a while, one begins to notice cars in ways not noticed before). The cinematography on Top Gear is as gorgeous as anything one would see in a nature documentary. The people on the show drive supercars and do ridiculous challenges and feats of derring-do, but that’s not the best part. The best part is the strange alchemy of the hosts.

Top Gear in Botswana

Top Gear is hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, alpha male; Richard Hammond, daredevil; and James May, genius. Their chemistry is amazing. They’re obviously best friends, because they bicker like brothers. They play asinine pranks on each other (usually Clarkson and Hammond ganging up on May). These three have the best gig in the world: they are sent cars to test and then discuss said cars on television. And they’re funny. The wit is bone dry.

And they have great adventures. James May and Jeremy Clarkson raced in a modified Toyota Hilux (a Tacoma for the European market) against Richard Hammond on a dogsled in a race to the Magnetic North Pole. The Toyota won, making Clarkson and May the first people to drive to the Pole. This also made May the first person to go to the North Pole that didn’t actually want to go.

For a recent trip to Bolivia, they had to cross from the rainforests of Bolivia to the Pacific coast of Chile; this was both hilarious and dangerous.

With cars they bought sight unseen via the Internet, they hacked their way through the rain forest, with its attendant enormous bugs, towards the harrowing “Death Road,” so named for its sheer drops and narrow roadway. They drove across a desert so inhospitable that no life forms survived there (Clarkson quipped that Richard Hammond, who is in fact, a bit short, was the smallest living organism there at the time). They drove across an active volcano and had to abandon their route due to severe hypoxia (a lack of oxygen causing massive dizziness and a drunken feeling). They ended their trek by driving down steep sand dunes (all except Hammond, whose handbrake-less Toyota careened down the dune on its own). The trip leads one to believe that the BBC no longer wants to insure them and instead just wants them dead.

They have driven motorbikes across Vietnam, buying each other ridiculous presents on the way. (The perfect gift to give someone riding a motorcycle? A replica of a galleon with huge sails.) They bought cars in Botswana and drove across the salt flats. They have converted a van into a convertible (which didn’t fare well in a car wash, but did quite well against monkeys). They have twice converted road vehicles into amphibious vehicles (once attempting to cross the English Channel). Fairly recently, they filmed another piece about the Toyota Hilux, this time on an active volcano. In Iceland. Shortly before it erupted. That would be Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that shut down European air travel.

Pages: 1 2