Top Gear’s success spreads far and wide, so much so that it’s already produced offsprings both in the US and in Australia. Now, it looks like another version is getting closer and closer to production.
The latest version of the successful British car show appears to be in China, with reports coming out that the pilot episode has already been produced. There isn’t any word yet on how the pilot episode ran, but it appears that the Chinese version will at least attempt to carry the humorous format of the original version. For the pilot, the three-man crew led by comedian Cao Yunjin, apparently tried to do a test between a Cadillac and a donkey to see which could push millstones around a farmyard more effectively.
Despite the dry attempt at catching a few laughs, the Chinese version of Top Gear won’t be as over-the-edge as the original British show. In an interview with China’s Global Times, the host mentioned that partly because of stringent censorship in the country, Top Gear China will not be as over-the-top as its British counterpart with stunts like say pushing a Maserati over a three-story building and smashing it.
"It may be too much violence for a fun program in China," Cao said. "We will do more localized fun stuff."
We haven’t had a chance to see a preview of Top Gear China – not that we’d understand it anyway – but we’re all hoping that it would be successful enough to be developed into a full-fledged show. At least if they stick to the ‘fun’ formula that has turned the show into one of the most iconic TV programs in the world today.
Top Gear USA received some good news recently after History decided to pick up the option for a second season of the US version of the hit British auto show, Top Gear.
This comes as a huge sigh of relief for the people behind the show as they seemed to have taken the pressure of producing a show amidst the enormous shadow of its British counterpart incredibly well. History, which is the new name for the History Channel, has ordered ten new episodes for season two with production set to begin sometime in the spring. No word yet on whether changes will be made for the second season, although the three hosts – Adam Ferrara, Rutledge Wood, and Tanner Foust – are all expected to be back.
The channel that carries Top Gear USA also announced that for the first season, Top Gear USA attracted a total audience of 60 million viewers for the entire season, with the show attracting a fairly young demographic, which History announced as being the youngest viewers of any series the network has ever shown.
Hit the jump to see what Top Gear UK thinks of the U.S. version’s success so far.
The blokes over at Top Gear are starting to make a habit of being spotted in obscure settings all over the world. Guess they’re really taking advantage of all those frequent flyer miles, eh?
A little over a month ago during their taping of the show’s Christmas Special, the whole crew of Top Gear was spotted in Israel sporting their own versions of custom drop-top roadsters on their way to meeting the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. We all know how that turned out.
This time around, the troika of Clarkson, Hammond, and May have been spotted in Albania. That’s right. Albania.We can only assume that the three chaps were taping an episode of the show in the country, after word leaked courtesy of Albarent, a local rental agency that was responsible for their transportation. According to Albarent, as soon as the hosts and the crew arrived at Tirana Airport, the rental agency went ahead and picked them before driving them to Saranda on the “Albanian Riviera” with a rental fleet including a Mercedes S350 VIP-LOUNGE, Hyundai H-1 VIP-LOUNGE 11+1 Minibus, and an IRISBUS IVECO Tourist Class 19+1 Minibus. Wow, that’s quite a motley crew.
Unfortunately, details as to what happened on their Albanian adventure have been kept under wraps. For us to find out, we’re going to have to tune in to the show, which quite frankly, we’ve never had a problem doing.
The presenters over at Top Gear have seen and driven just about every supercar that has been produced for the last decade, so it’s not surprising that the fastest lap times around their race track belong to the fastest and most powerful machines on the planet.
But as the course of history has shown us, once in a while, a modern day David arrives with a rock and a sling in hand to topple the mighty Goliaths in one fell swoop.
Weighing only 550 kg and powered by a 3.0-liter V8 engine that produces 500 horsepower, this David is by no means a pushover. It’s the Ariel Atom V8 500 and it sure made quite an impression on Top Gear.
As if we didn’t have any more reason to get all geeked up over the 16th season of Top Gear, the lovely folks over at the BBC were kind enough to give us a peek of what to expect from Clarkson, Hammond, and May.
Top Gear’s 16th season is set to hit the tubes on Sunday, January 23, 2011, at 8 pm on BBC2 and BBC HD with the show airing in the States at a later date, that is unless you decide to stream the show on the Internet. As you can expect, you can take it to the bank that they’ve got tons of surprises in store for us.
Now we don’t know the full details behind the show, but we’ve gotten a glimpse of some of the things on tap for season no. 16, including reviews on the new Ariel Atom and the Skoda Yeti, a segment on the proper way to destroy a Volkswagen Beetle, a classic dust-up between the Porsche 959 and the Ferrari F40, a segment involving submarines, James May in tights, and landing a helicopter on top of a car.
At some point, there’s also going to be the return of our favorite test driver, the Stig, somewhere in there.
Rest assured, season 16 of Top Gear is expected to be one for the books, and quite frankly, coming from Clarkson, Hammond and May, we don’t expect anything less.
