Lotus 79, you say? This one I’ll have to watch! 🙂

As entertainment the new series has been good with some proper funny bits. And I was pleased to see Chris Harris isn’t dragged into all the mad stuff (like the contrived Borneo section this week)*.

And I really felt sorry for that Matra – it deserved so much better than being trashed by TG.

*Anyone else get the impression this was shot in a weekend about 100m from a main road with no actual ‘trip’ involved.

Enjoyed it overall. Flintoff just needs reigning in / replacing. Paddy presented well and Chris is brilliant I think.

I seem to be in a minority, but I’ve stuck with Top Gear throughout and this is the first series I’ve actively disliked. It had me cringing in embarrassment throughout. At a couple of points I even had to check if Antiques Roadshow was preferable – it wasn’t, but turning the TV off was…

So contrived, and downright upnpleasant at times. Some posters said they dialled down Freddie’s bullying behaviour in the last episode but I didn’t see much evidence of that when he got Chris Harris in a half hug/half headlock at the end of the Iceland segment.

I haven’t watched it in yonks, and with the demise of fifth-gear, ive yet to find anything on TV that reviews ( fairly average) cars.
Mainstream TV left us in the dark in that respect.

With the amount of money, flung at top-gear, there’s room for a tv show in which they crash cars into each other to gauge human survivability.

Hurtling cars into concrete blocks at xx mph is one thing, but pitting a range-rover against a ‘city-car’might be an eye-opener.

most of the people on this forum harbour aspirations to take their bikes to the countryside.
However, given the speed/ accident rate on country roads, a ‘city-car’ doesn’t stack up well in what is basically a vehicular arms-race.

As enjoyable to watch as top-gear was, they did no favours by encouraging the proliferation of cars in urban areas. That kind of devalued cars in my opinion. Cars are amazing (and toxic) technological objects. But you stop appreciating them when they’re abseloutely everywhere.

I believe that Doug Stanhope made a similar remark about cats, something like “bring me the golf-shoes”.

So. Had a look – started the Iceland bit: bobbins, just not engaging, total lack of chemistry. Why’s Flintoff there? Fearless? Bog off – who cares, he can’t present on telly. Fast-forwarded to the 79 bit – interesting, really enjoyed it, and shows there’s an interesting feature they can do week on week that proves it doesn’t always have to be the latest and greatest to have a story to tell.

Some striking “things”. First “thing” – Colin Chapman by no means invented ground effects (although he was the first to make it work). Jim Hall at Chaparral dabbled in the sixties, March had a play in F1 in the early seventies – it was not new tech. Second “thing”, the Lotus 79 was not the first ground effect car – it wasn’t even the first ground effect Lotus. The 79’s predecessor, the imaginatively-titled Lotus 78, also used ground effect. Third “thing” – there was a curious focus on the importance of skirts without explaining why they were important, unless maybe I missed it. Key thing is that the underside of the car is shaped like an upside-down aeroplane wing (the 78 was called the “wing car”), so the wing shape creates downforce and sucks the car to the track, instead of producing lift like a right-way-up aeroplane wing – skirts stopped the low pressure area under the lowest point of the “wing” from sucking air in from the side, thus minimising the air pressure aft of the low point and maximising the downforce.

Outside of the slightly blase approach to facts, it was great they let Chris have a bash in an F1 Lotus, but a real shame it was wet. I hadn’t appreciated (and again, maybe I missed it) that the first laps were with the skirts lifted. But otherwise – old-school F1 on BBC gets a round of applause from me. 🙂

old-school F1 on BBC gets a round of applause from me. 🙂

The problem is that the bits that are good for people interested in cars themselves are the boring bits for people who watch for the fake slapstick. My wife says she loves Top Gear at the moment – she has never watched an episode before. She picks up her phone for every Chris Harris car-nerd piece. I’m the opposite.

Some posters said they dialled down Freddie’s bullying behaviour in the last episode but I didn’t see much evidence of that when he got Chris Harris in a half hug/half headlock at the end of the Iceland segment.

I suspect they edited out the following bit where he chucked him back in the swamp. 😒

Lotus 79 bit was ace, notwithstanding it might not have been accurate ^^

Major issue, we want to see the fast cars go round the track. You can’t just stick it up on the board.
Not a fan of Flintoff and boy he’s out of his depth here.

They need to have a leader-board in terms of car-safety.

I’m still wondering which would come out ‘tops’ in a collision…a Range Rover or a Hilux???

Major issue, we want to see the fast cars go round the track. You can’t just stick it up on the board.

No we don’t – I’ve always hated that bit! 🙂

I’m into cars and I find the lap by the Stig dull to watch – we tend to have just seen the car being flung round the track for ten minutes, another 3 or 4 gets boring.

I just started it on catch up last night – the first episode was pretty good, I enjoyed it. Freddie Flintoff sounds like a kid reading his lines at a nativity play in the voice overs but I like them much more than I thought I would, especially Paddy.

I watched the Lotus 79 episode at the weekend, immediately followed by the highlights of the British GP with the Spitfire fly-over at the beginning. Two of my boyhood fantasy machines in the space of 30 minutes. Brilliant.

So. Had a look – started the Iceland bit: bobbins, just not engaging, total lack of chemistry. Why’s Flintoff there? Fearless? Bog off – who cares, he can’t present on telly.

Not what I saw, anyway Flintoff was there to drive insane Icelandic buggies up vertical walls and across lakes, which is what he did, as did Harris, in a national championship, and neither of them embarrassed themselves! Sixth and seventh? Bloody heck, that was pretty good going, and I really enjoyed watching it.

I bet there were only 8 in it. 😁

I like to see the Stig lap of the supercar, watching it being driven properly rather than the tyre smoking drifting shit done in the film about it. And it never takes 3 of 4 minutes, IIRC the lap record is sub 1.20!

I like them much more than I thought I would, especially Paddy.

He is always pretty good. Anyone that was in Pheonix Nights can’t be all bad. Think he just accepts any jobs he is offered so ends up on some atrocious ITV shows but then so would I when you get offered good money and the next job is never guaranteed.

If all of the episodes were like the last episode it would have been a good series. I think the going to another country in inappropriate cars is popular but I have always found it the worst part of Top Gear.

So, from the posts above it seems that the TG producers have got the show spot on. They have made a program that caters for the car nerd, the fast lap fan, the light entertainment crowd and the people who like a bit of interesting racing history. The viewing figures for this series must be the best yet.

Christ, I bet some of you lot are a riot at parties.