The days before the 17th season of Top Gear are slowly ticking away and BBC is lessening our pain with yet another trailer for the highly anticipated car show. The second trailer is loaded with more images for the upcoming season and also confirms the season opener date: Sunday, June 26th.
The first episode of Top Gear Season 17 is set to be aired on June 26, but for all of those fans that cannot wait another moment to see the Top Gear UK trio at work, BBC has been kind enough to release a teaser trailer of what to expect.
The trailer will refuel your Top Gear obsession by showing clips of Jeremy Clarkson driving the McLaren MP4-12C, James May riding around in the Mini WRC racing car, and Richard Hammond cruising in the Dartz Prombron through city streets. A Porsche Boxster, a Citroën DS3 Racing, and an Abarth 500C will also be making their appearances, plus a short trip to Monte Carlo will help to wrap things up.
We may still have to wait 11 days for the full episode to grace our television screens, but this teaser trailer just cements the fact that Top Gear 17 is starting and will be better than ever.
Looks like we may have to wait a couple more weeks to get our Top Gear fix.
Earlier rumored to debut on June 12, everybody’s favorite automotive show is now reportedly set to begin its 17th season on June 26, 2011. The Applause Store - the company that handles tickets for Top Gear - has posted the filming dates for this summer’s season of Top Gear with the first episode scheduled for June 22. Since episodes are filmed the Wednesday before they air, we can therefore deduce that the first episode will air on June 26th. That’s just 19 days away! Five more episodes will then air each Sunday after that until July 27, which means that the season finale will be aired on July 31. ending on July 31st.
While BBC2 has yet to confirm the season schedule, this timeline looks to be far more legitimate than the earlier date of June 12. So if you’re getting excited about this Sunday, you might have to hold off your expectations for another two weeks.
Whether or not you were young enough - or maybe not even born yet - to not remember the career of arguably the greatest auto racing driver in history, you still owe it to yourself and your love for racing to watch the just-released feature-length documentary of Ayrton Senna.
Regarded with so many superlatives both as a man and as a racer, Ayrton Senna was a larger-than-life character who happened to be the best at what he did: auto racing. The man was charismatic, passionate, and an all-around lighting rod. Unfortunately, he was also a victim of an accident that cost him his life.
Over the past year, the documentary about the greatest racer of all time was being developed and now, the final product is about ready to hit the shelves. Everything you want and need to know about Ayrton Senna is included in the documentary, including his early upbringing in Brazil, his meteoric rise to the top of Formula One, his unbridled rivalry with Alain Prost, and even the fateful afternoon in Imola in 1994 when everything ended so unexpectedly.
Ever the source of important automotive information, Top Gear is front and center in promoting the documentary. The British auto show has a review of it up on their site and in addition to that, the latest issue of the magazine, which will go on sale on May 18, will contain a free preview DVD of the documentary that includes film footage, outtakes, exclusive interviews with Alain Prost and director Asif Kapadia, and so much more.
If there ever was a documentary that puts serious truth to the phrase "must-watch", this one is it.
We’ve been hearing a lot of news from the world of Top Gear recently and arguably the biggest news of all is about to be laid out to all of you. Yes, dear folks, the 17th season – has it been that many? – of Top Gear is headed back to the tubes beginning on June 12, 2011.
The news was first reported by FinalGear.com - as good a source as any Top Gear-related website out there – which bared Top Gear’s return after it was first divulged in the May issue of the Dutch edition of Top Gear magazine. Us here in America will get a double dose of the fun too as the first season of Top Gear USA will start to be sold in DVD form on July 19.
As far as what’s in store for us with season 17 of Top Gear, well, your guess is good as ours. But we’ve seen Clarkson and May push a Nissan Leaf and there have been reports that the McLaren MP4-12C posted the fastest lap on the Top Gear track. Yep, its looking like just a regular season of Top Gear; one full of laughs, surprises, and controversies.
Top Gear has never been shy of dealing with controversies and lawsuits, having spent an inordinate amount of their time and resources deflecting complaints left and right, including a recent dispute with Tesla over the state of their electric sports car.
Turns out, Top Gear’s electric car curse has come back and bitten Jeremy Clarkson in the hiney a second time. In the middle of their EV test drive with the Nissan Leaf and the Peugeot iOn, the former’s electric power runs out on the Britishman, leaving him stranded and at a loss of what to do with the latest debacle. Worse off, the whole incident happened in the city and outside of the Top Gear test track. After much deliberation and a few requests to boot, the two crackling hosts - together with a number of good-hearted volunteers - were able to push the stricken Leaf into the University of Lincoln where an outlet was ready, willing, and waiting.
In the event that Nissan decides to file a lawsuit against Top Gear similar to Tesla, the British show at least has visual evidence of what transpired, probably saving them a whole truckload of money.
Not one to back away from the bombardment of complaints they’ve received over the years, the producers of Top Gear have returned fire at Tesla over the latter’s surprising lawsuit against the popular British show.
Tesla is suing Top Gear for libel and malicious falsehood over a review of the Tesla Roadster that happened a little over two years ago. For their part, Top Gear is not one to lay down without a fight, or in this case, a response to Tesla’s claims. So the show’s executive producer, Andy Wilman, went on the offensive and released a letter explaining their side of the story.
It’s not the first time that Top Gear has been in hot water, but there seems to be a certain sense of seriousness with this particular lawsuit and we won’t be surprised if the British show sees this case all the way through the courts, as opposed to their usual routine of witty banter on one of their episodes.
To read about Andy Wilman’s response to Tesla’s claims, proceed after the jump.
For all the fun and hilarity Top Gear has given us for the better part of a decade, the show has also been a lightning rod of controversy as evidenced by the countless number of complaints and law suits the show – and BBC as a network – has received from just about everybody it has ‘offended’ since the show became a worldwide phenomenon.
Apparently, one of the recipient’s of Top Gear’s sometimes brash and swaggering wrath has decided to bite back.
Two years ago, the British show caused quite a stir on one of their shows for their sharp and pointed criticisms of the Tesla Roadster. Understandably so, it didn’t sit well with the folks over at Tesla Motors and after a few back and forth barbs with the British show, the California-based automaker decided to turn the other cheek – with the strong arm of a lawsuit.
According to Tesla, Top Gear’s whole review of the Roadster was predicated on their pre-existing grounds that electric cars don’t work – if you watch the video, you’re going to notice James May tease a future segment later on in the episode, debunking the notion of electric cars being the future of the auto industry – and in turn, giving viewers a distorted image of the Roadster as a completely unreliable and irrelevant car.
Tesla’s VP of Communications, Ricardo Reyes, elaborated on the issue through the company’s blog site. In it, he wrote that “the show’s script, written before the cars were tested, has host Jeremy Clarkson concluding the segment by saying, "in the real world, it doesn’t seem to work."
Top Gear has ruffled a lot of feathers on its show, but Tesla seems to be taking this very seriously. Whether BBC decides to engage in a sartorial volley with the American automaker is totally in their character, but in this instance, it looks like they may have to play nice and put on a serious look before facing an automaker that’s throwing libel charges at them.
Or, they could just avoid all the hoopla and just stop rebroadcasting the episode in question and set the record straight about the car. But knowing Top Gear and BBC, what are the chances of that happening?
Check out the controversial Top Gear segment after the jump.
A lot of us were too young to remember this movie, but for those that had a chance to see George Miller’s Mad Max movie, you might have caught sight of Mel Gibson driving around in a Ford Falcon XB GT351 Interceptor. Thirty-two years after both Gibson and the Interceptor became Hollywood royalty - well we’re going to use the term royalty loosely with Gibson considering his latest personal antics -, an Australian group headed by Ford and Top Gear Australia magazine is in the process of developing two new concept studies of the Interceptor, or as we should say, a present-day take on Mad Max’s bad-ass ride.
Ford Australia formed a group of designers headlined by Todd Willing, the company’s chief of design for Asia, Pacific, and African passenger cars. Led by Willing, the team conceptualized and designed a number of design studies using the original Interceptor as the basis for their creations. In the end, the two best studies – designed by Nima Nourian and Simon Brook – were chosen for the next stage in the decision-making process.
The two designs will then be featured on a future issue of Top Gear Australia where readers will get the opportunity to vote on their preferred design, which would then be turned into a full-fledged scale model that’s scheduled to be revealed later this year.
Is this a case of nostalgia or a marketing ploy to drum up interest on what appears to be the fourth chapter of the Mad Max franchise, tentatively titled “Fury Road”? We can’t say for sure that both items are connected to each other, but it is a little coincidental, to say the least.
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.
