The year 2010 is coming to a close in a few weeks and we are still hearing news about Top Gear’s Stig. Yeah, talk about a story dragging longer than any of us expected.
The latest twist in the ongoing drama involves a certain former member of Top Gear who now plies his craft on a competing show, but will be returning to Top Gear on a temporary basis to serve as the show’s Stig. We’ve gotten word that Fifth Gear’s affable old-timer, Tiff Needell, will be returning to Top Gear as the Stig after a nine-year absence.
For those who didn’t follow the show back in its pre-Clarkson days, Needell was a co-presenter on the show from 1987 up to 2001 when the show was canceled. Since the show returned it has become a worldwide phenomenon, but the whole controversial ‘StigGate,’ has left them struggling to recover. This is why they have reached out to an old friend to fill in some of the voids left behind by the Stig catastrophe. Needell’s task was to teach and train Danny Boyle, the director of the award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, how to drive the Top Gear test track for his appearance on Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car.
Danny said: “The Stig has gone of course so they have this other guy Tiff Needell who used to front the original Top Gear. He was a terrific teacher, no nonsense. It was good.”
According to a Top Gear spokesman, Tiff will not be donning the white tracksuit and helmet permanently, but will only be around until Top Gear finds a permanent Stig through its "Stig Farm".
As you may know by now, Top Gear is headed to Bethlehem for Christmas in order to follow the same route as the Three Wise Men using a BMW Z3, a Fiat Barchetta, and a Mazda MX-5 as their camels. A short preview of the episode was already featured last week, but the full trailer for the special has now been released.
The Christmas special will be aired on December 26th, 2010 and will feature a Top Gear version of the boys’ "own 21st century nativity play," but as a gift for the holiday season Top Gear will also air their regular episode on December 21st. This episode features an "epic road trip up America’s east coast" with the boys driving a Mercedes SLS, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, and a Ferrari 458 Italia. In this segment, the trio put the sports cars to the test to determine which is the greatest. Other segments of the episode will include Danny Boyle’s track run of the reasonably priced car and "a round up of car-related Christmas tat."
There you have it, two Top Gear episodes in one week. Isn’t Christmas wonderful?
By now, we’ve already seen and heard about Top Gear’s Christmas Special where the troika of Clarkson, Hammond, and May went out for a trip to Israel to go to Bethlehem while reprising the role of the three kings in their nooky-kooky drop tops.
But what we didn’t know was that their trip to Bethlehem would be a lot trickier than just navigating their drop tops along the streets of Israel. In this teaser video leading up to the Christmas Special, the hosts arrive in the Middle East courtesy of a cargo plane only to find out that Bethlehem was 1,200 miles away.
With Top Gear, there’s always a catch, right?
In this case, it’s this: instead of landing in Israel, they touched down in – of all places – Iraq. From there, they would have to drive the 1,200 miles to Bethlehem and while being careful to avoid all the wars currently happening between here and there. And by the way, they also must pick up gold, frankincense, and myrrh along the way.
Not feeling so ‘wise’ now, huh?
The Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond may be all fun and jokes in front of the camera, but despite their cunning wit and silly banter, these three all share a unique similarity: they know everything and anything there is to know about cars.
When they say a car is good or bad, their opinions carry more clout than the standard human because they’ve done their homework through countless hours of testing, free drives, and taped segments on the show. And now that we’re nearing the end of an amazingly eventful year, the trio have decided to finally release their choice of vehicles that will be included in the 11th Top Gear Awards.
With categories ranging from Hypercar of the Year, Grand Tourer of the Year, Coupe of the Year, and even Engine of the Year, the three hosts took everything they’ve seen, heard, and driven in 2010 to come up with a winner for each respective category.
In addition to these categories, Clarkson, May, and Hammond also picked their favorite cars of the year regardless of make, model, and type. Care to find out the award winners?
As with any new road-going car trying to make some headway and generate some buzz, the Bowler Nemesis EXR found its way into the clutches of Top Gear. And since the show’s hosts are the ever free-wheeling and daredevil folks that they are - actually, it was just Richard Hammond - they decided to give the Nemesis EXR a proper introduction into the world of crazy test drives.
Taking its cue as a road-version of the Bowler Nemesis racing machine, Hammond decided to find out how the the production version was going to handle being chased by the ever-clicking, and seemingly determined lenses of the paparazzi. Through a number of courses - tarmac, dirt road, and beach - Hammond ran the Nemesis EXR with only one goal in mind: reach the finish line without a paparazzi snapping up a clear high-resolution picture.
The competition was no less formidable for the Nemesis EXR, which included a Jaguar XKR, a Robinson R44 lightweight helicopter, two motor bikes, a Jackal military vehicle, and a hovercraft. In the end - despite Hammond’s lack of driving skills - the Nemesis was able to prevail over the paparazzi, an achievement in itself for Bowler’s road-going monster masterpiece.
