Hiring an executive won't make your cars better designed. Hiring (or training) a few engineers and giving them a whopping R&D budget might. China can definitely do the latter. I just hope they're not daft enough to do the former.

Jon

I hated the India xmas special and switched it off due to the OTT contents –

This series I have personally enjoyed both episodes so far, I love the super car challenge in the first episode and although I loved the Lambo and its flaming exhaust I would still swing towards the Mclaren MP4-12C (I’ve looked round the factory and sat in one so I’m sold on it for the rest of my life and will buy one when my numbers come in… )

The NASCAR was interesting and looked hard work to me, not sure it floats my boat but everyone to their own…. Not sure why the reference to F1 kept cropping up as they are two extremes imo with plenty in the middle to bridge the gap (Indycar etc)

Hopefully the rest of the series will be as good or better.

And... they've ruined it again.

Well, I'm saying they have - the constant cringing forced me to turn it off during the reasonably priced car piece.

End of a promising run. That could have been a good piece about filming car chases too. Shame.

Some of the banter in the studio was okay but the rest was just pants.

That was a doubly frustrating episode because the Sweeney section was nearly very good. Hammond was just a dick from the start, which was irritating, but on the whole Jeremy started off on a very solid footing, and if he hadn't gone off on one about relative horsepower and turning the traction control off I think there could have been something very good there.

Unfortunately I have a feeling that all of the stuff that was used in the film at the end was done by the actual stunt directors and Clarkson and Hammond just put their bit of "Do a handbrake turn here" etc... on the front so it looked like it was their idea.

i.e. neither of them had any input into the film they just went there and acted like fools.

BBC - give the show more money (sack a few football pundits or something) so it can get back to the glory days of not having to rely on the presenters' acting skills...

It was almost complete arse from beginning to end.

The main feature? That was just a rewarmed VW ad episode. The only interesting bit was James' bit at the start.

Everything else was utter tosh.


Fixed

I've an awful feeling that a significant part of the audience (both viewers and the crowd on the day) are women who like Hammond... He never annoyed me until more recent years, and I think that's got more to do with the show itself. Ffs, he's not even as annoying on Total Wipeout as he is on TG.

Re. stunt section.
That director's a twat. Innit.

No positive comments on this page.

TG used to be amusing because it abandoned the predictable approach of other car shows and embraced the a little anarchy. Now it's tired because everything that was new has been endlessly repeated (which is not a reference to Dave).

When they describe a fast car they, invariably do so in terms of which bodily organs it rearranges while accelerating, braking and cornering.
When they talk about a rubbish car, they compare it to a better example of the same thing, then they astonishingly turn out to prefer the bad car because the other one is too perfect, and the bad one has soul.
Or else it reminds them of a cheerful dog that they like.

All of those, and many other formulaic maneuvers, come courtesy of Clarkson, but have been increasingly aped by the other two. Hammond, in contrast, has pretty much never said anything that the other two feel the need to rip off. I can see how it is hard to avoid resorting to formula when reviewing a lot of the same thing (especially given that they slavishly lap up every new Aston Martin even though they are all minor variations of the same thing), but perhaps somebody who can provide a few new metaphors would relieve some of the tedium. Maybe they could even hire a poet of such gift that Clarkson would let him introduce the Stig occasionally!?

Worse still, although their antics have always been choreographed, everything they do now is so artlessly contrived. The banners on the side of the Indian train were terribly set up, and the joke was one they have done far more subtly before, making the punchline visible beyond the horizon. Hammond's absurd pretence that he was leaving the engine in that car for any reason other than to make it humorously front-heavy was a horribly cack-handed way to announce which fake fubar was coming next. Not to mention the film director who uses words that have to be bleeped out when shouting at Hammond, but carefully uses ones that can be shown on TV when writing on his car.

Perhaps it's time for them to abandon this transparently fraudulent anarchy, and allow a little of the real stuff. Hammond may be a regrettably dreary front man, but the director is the one who most needs to go.

Absolutely agree with everything.

The whole show needs a new direction. Maybe it's time to do a new new Top Gear. i.e. what they did to the old one to get to this one, do again to this one.

All they need to do is stop scripting absolutely everything, unless of course the shooting schedule is very harsh... They seemed to cope before it got crap though