The Top Gear Story (6 page)

Some of the corners were already in situ, but others – such as Chicago and Hammerhead – have literally been painted onto the track to add extra challenges. According to
Top Gear
, they are repeatedly asked to host track days for fans and one can imagine the demand would be huge, but alas the track is essentially a figure-of-eight and so carnage would at some point prevail.

The track itself is a graveyard for failed celebrity laps but also an automotive Hollywood Walk of Fame, with several corners and names for parts of the track honouring former contestants and incidents. So we have ‘Crooner Corner’ named after The Stig’s famed penchant for easy listening music. Then it’s on to Willson, so-called for former
Top Gear
presenter Quentin Willson, the first part of the track where inferior cars start to struggle. Chicago is named not after the Mid-Western city in the USA but for the MOR band that’s another Stig favourite; likewise Bacharach, as in Burt. Former producer and
Top Gear
legend Jon Bentley is celebrated with the infamous tyre wall, whose camera shakes if a car travels through fast enough. This is situated at the end of ‘The Follow-Through’, in itself the most extreme test of a driver’s
nerve on the track, with even supercars sometimes having to lift slightly to avoid oblivion. But perhaps most famous of all is Gambon – originally dubbed Carpenters after the classic genteel brother/sister duo from the 1970s. Oh, and Hammerhead is
so-named
because it’s shaped like a hammerhead!

Of course, The Stig is the master around this track, but even he is sometimes beaten by the mental power of certain howling supercars. Most famously was a crash in the Koenigsegg, The Stig’s biggest mash-up (of more later). There’s a rumour that in late-2010, a computer console version of the
Top Gear
test track will be made available within the
Gran Turismo
game.

One other prominent feature of the new
Top Gear
format was the so-called ‘Cool Wall’. This was one of many features introduced with the new format to get around a very pragmatic problem: it’s so much more demanding to film a car review show in the
post-Millennial
era because
modern cars are so good
. The dark days of British Leyland that Clarkson has so controversially rebuked over the years are long gone, unionists no longer control the factories and as a rule, most cars coming onto the market have had billions of pounds in development spent on them. Very few modern cars go badly wrong; some even offer ‘lifetime warranties’, so confident are their manufacturers of the quality; others bought on the high street for relatively modest amounts are quicker than the rally cars of the 1970s.

So to some extent,
Top Gear
are frequently faced with the tricky problem that when a new car comes along to the marketplace, it is very well built, thoughtfully finished and altogether a soundly designed piece of engineering. This is a problem that the show’s producer Andy Wilman directly alluded to in a book that he co-wrote with Richard Hammond,
What Not to Drive
(2006). So, apart from stunts and specials, the stars in
cars and lengthy features, the show has had to come up with other ways of reviewing cars, the basic staple item on a programme such as this. For the majority of less-glamorous cars, one way of doing this is the so-called ‘Cool Wall’.

Each week, photos of cars are held aloft and discussed/berated by the presenters, with occasional interjections from the studio audience, after which the threesome agree which side of the wall they can go on: ‘Seriously Uncool’, ‘Uncool’, ‘Cool’ and ‘Sub-Zero’. Each presenter has different and highly subjective criteria for classifying a car’s cool factor – for example, Clarkson uses the idea of whether the car would impress his celebrity crush, Kristin Scott Thomas (or more latterly, Fiona Bruce). Other times, he disagrees with Hammond and takes precedence by putting the photo out of reach of the diminutive star (when Clarkson slipped a disc, Hammond got his own back by placing a car photo at the bottom of the board). In Series 4, they also added the ‘DB9
Super-Cool
Fridge’, having reviewed that car in a category of coolness all of its own (later adding another Aston, the Vantage). There has also been the ‘Crock/Classic’ Mini-Cool Wall for more vintage cars.

One definite rule-of-thumb is that any car owned by one of the presenters – regardless of how super-cool it had previously been – is automatically consigned to the ‘Uncool’ section. This seems harsh when it traps cars such as the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder purchased by Jeremy after reviewing it in Series 8, Episode 7. Comparing the convertible Lambo with the new Ferrari 430, he damned the latter (unusual for Clarkson) as boring and serious, while revelling in the madness of the baby Lambo. He openly admitted to being in love with the Gallardo and admits – like love – that his feelings were not necessarily rational (he wasn’t a fan of the hard-top Gallardo). So irrational in fact were his emotions that he promptly went and bought one, but in doing so consigned the beautiful supercar to eternity on the ‘Uncool’
end of the Cool Wall. (Note: the
Top Gear
team seem to like Lambo drop-tops, a style of car that had historically seen numerous supercars turn into badly handling death-traps; when Hammond went on the Paloma bull run, he happily compared the Lambo Murcielago to that adrenaline-fuelled experience.)

The ‘Uncool’ status bestowed on any presenter’s car is perhaps more understandable for James’s Fiat Panda, whose picture ended up several metres left of the board in an ‘Uncool’ anti-Aston section of its own. Usually, automatic ‘Uncool’ models include hybrids, diesels, most 4x4s, People Carriers and German cars. Worse still, the BMW 3 Series E90 was considered so ugly that it was not placed on the Wall at all.

Although many cars are consigned to oblivion due to entirely subjective reasoning, there are several hard and fast rules for avoiding the ‘Uncool’ part of the Wall: avoid buying celebrity cars; also those that are ‘fashionable’ such as Audi TTs or VW Beetles; supercars and sports-cars are not guaranteed shoo-ins; customising, accessorising or souping up an ‘Uncool’ car won’t suddenly make it cool; the cost is irrelevant but the colour isn’t; some cars are cool for boys but not for girls (and vice versa) and finally, it’s not about an entire brand, it’s each individual model.

After a fire on set in the summer of 2007, the ‘Cool Wall’ enjoyed a sabbatical before returning for Series 11 and is now long since established as a vital part of the show. As an aside, the
Top Gear
team also sell a
Cool Wall Activity Sticker Book
with its very own ‘Cool Wall’ poster, which you can put up and then attach various stickers of cars where you think they deserve to go. There is also a ‘Cool Wall’ app for the iPhone, where you can play along, too. I have both, naturally. 

T
here’s a conker tree at the end of my lane. My two little petrol-heads have just discovered the joy of collecting conkers and we are currently soaking the two largest in special
vinegar-and
-water solution prior to launching an all-conkering (apologies) assault on the English championships. It’s a fabled and longstanding rite of passage for any self-respecting boy and his father. Of course, when you grow up, you still
want
to play conkers but society dictates it really wouldn’t be decent for grown men to continue with such childish games … unless of course you work on
Top Gear
.

With Series 1 flying the flag for testosterone-fuelled challenges and supercars, it was clear that the new version of
Top Gear
would not shy away from the more dramatic world of motoring. The on-screen chemistry between the three presenters was immediately apparent from May’s first show in Series 2 and this is often best seen when they are basically fooling around. And what better to fool around with than a caravan?

The series has a hate-hate relationship with the little white traffic jam-makers. Over the years, Clarkson and chums have made no secret of their intense dislike for the homes-on-wheels (perhaps on a par only with cyclists). This has manifested itself into numerous hilarious stunts. The first time that the innocent ‘van’ was desecrated came in Series 2, Episode 1, when they burnt the show’s debut caravan with the afterburner of a
drag-racing
jet car; however, the tense relationship really worsened in Series 2, Episode 6. For this show, the team tested the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII versus the Subaru Impreza WRX STI. After the clip had been shown, Clarkson revealed an out-take of himself in one of the cars, going berserk as the crew followed a caravan up ahead at a snail’s pace. He went on to describe the hotel-on-wheels as ‘the bane of our lives’. Clearly, something had to be done.

In response, the
Top Gear
team attempted to set a new land speed record for caravan towing. The current record stood at 128.8mph, so they sent new boy James May to a track to see if he could top that. Using a turbo-charged Mitsubishi Evo 7, which could generate more than 700bhp, a stunt driver called ‘Lee’ (notably not The Stig as would be the norm in later series) and an Abbey GT 214 caravan, they attempted – and failed – to beat the record time. A combination of cross winds, caravan kitchenette window blow-outs and ultimately, the Evo blowing a piston defeated them. Still, May had his revenge and dropped the caravan from a great height off a crane at the end of the show.

In Series 3 (otherwise largely dull when it came to fun features), the schoolboys/presenters took the caravan owner’s car of choice – a Volvo 240 estate – and attempted to see how many caravans it could jump over, Evel Knievel style. They chose the car because it was ‘the caravan’s friend’. ‘Every summer they ruin our roads,’ declared Hammond, before going on to slaughter
caravans as transport vermin. So, how many caravans could the Volvo jump? Not many, it transpired.

The vendetta was taken up a notch in Series 4 while playing darts with cars. Using a gas-powered cannon normally reserved for mad stunts in James Bond movies, Hammond and May perched themselves on the top of a quarry and proceeded to fire six old cars at a dartboard, way down below. After several disputed shots, they decided to clarify the bullseye with the placement of the ultimate target: a caravan. With telling poignancy, the very last car is a caravan-loving Volvo and Hammond triumphs by hitting the bullseye/caravan perfectly after which he announces: ‘We are all winners because the caravan bought it!’

However, it was in Series 5 that
Top Gear
revealed their most vicious-ever caravan abuse when James May joined Hammond to play the aforementioned ‘Caravan Conkers’. It was actually the much-maligned Health and Safety Executive (HSE) who inspired this challenge after they had declared in 2009 that children wanting to play the age-old game should wear safety goggles (Clarkson has gone on record as calling the HSE ‘the PPD’, which stands for ‘The Programme Prevention Department’).

Two enormous green cranes were provided by the same specialist team who had worked with the car-launching hydrogen cannon for the previous car darts sequence. Hammond and May then proceeded to engage in a three-round competition of conkers using a selection of six of Britain’s finest fibreglass homes, such as the Musketeer, the Sprite and of course, the Ford Mondeo of the caravan world, the ubiquitous Monza. Before battle commenced, there was much talk of 3-er and 9-er conkers, with each presenter displaying a genuine glint that betrayed a childhood spent playing the actual game in the playground.

The caravans were painted a brownish-red to look like conkers
but unfortunately the emulsion paint virtually washed off in the rain before filming began. Suspending the caravans high in the air and 50 feet apart, Round 1 went to Hammond’s heavy Piper model, but May struck back with a surprise win for his Sprite Musketeer in Round 2 against the much-fancied Monza, only for Hammond to sneak a victory with a high-spec Abbey GT in Round 3, a caravan with hot and cold running water and a separate bathroom, no less, which must have given him the edge. It was all pointless, puerile and utterly great fun. May pretty much summed up the feeling of any ‘bigger boy’ watching this feature, when he said: ‘It’s better than working in a bank!’

Although this was perhaps their most violent demolition of the hated towing beast, undoubtedly the best
Top Gear
caravan jinx came in Series 14, when May went up in a caravan airship, racing Hammond on the ground in a Lamborghini. The very sight of the caravan strapped to the base of a Zeppelin-esque airship was perhaps one of the most bizarre of any episode of
Top Gear
, but things quickly started to go wrong. The original plan had been to land the odd-looking flying machine on a cricket pitch somewhere in Cambridgeshire (and ideally in the middle of a match for obvious dramatic effect) but strong winds rapidly blew the caravan airship off-course so it crash-landed in a farmer’s field near the A428. Although the tabloids ran pieces about May’s ‘lucky escape’, in fact no emergency services were needed, not least because the accident was at a recorded speed of 2mph. You walk at 4mph, so the ‘crash’ actually resembled falling over … slowly. (Note: May once suffered a sprained wrist while ‘travelling at speed’ in a shopping trolley for
Top Gear Live
in 2006).

The humble caravan also found itself repeatedly battered as an indirect result of otherwise unrelated challenges, such as the time when the team were testing the resilience of a 911 Turbo and decided it would be a good idea to drop the German car from a
great height onto a caravan. Later, the roles were flipped for a Toyota Hilux feature, when they dropped the caravan from a great height onto the pick-up – proving beyond doubt that despite their complaints about the ‘van’, if nothing else it is a highly versatile vehicle. Hammond has also tried to see how far a car towing a caravan can jump in response to the same stunt being done by the rival show,
Fifth Gear
.

Meanwhile, James May slept with the devil on his show,
Oz and James Drink to Britain
, in which he travelled the nation drinking with famed wine connoisseur Oz Clarke (surprisingly, you would expect May to be a nifty vino tippler, but he’s actually a dedicated bitter man; he has also said: ‘I’ve never quite trusted water, I don’t think it’s entirely healthy.’). May drove around the isles in a predictably British Rolls-Royce Corniche Cabriolet, but he risked the wrath of his
Top Gear
colleagues by spending good money on a 1978 Sprite Caravan for their sleeping quarters. Judas!

Of course the most obvious thing to do with a caravan is to go on holiday and that’s exactly what the
Top Gear
team did in Episode 6, Series 8. They bought a lovely Elddis for £3,000 and attached it to a Kia, the Caravan Club’s ‘Towing Car of the Year’ no less (Clarkson’s own opinion of the brand is slightly less positive, dubbing it ‘soulless’). The team set off for Dorset and before long there was a huge traffic jam behind them, with the three presenters cringing with embarrassment in the Kia. Hammond even declared: ‘I can’t bear the shame!’ Clarkson made the point that while the Caravan Club claim their members will pull over and let traffic queues past periodically, he has never once seen this in 30 years of driving.

After the
Top Gear
dog (‘TG’) was sick in the car, they finally made it to the caravan site where they initially parked so badly that they wrecked a neighbouring tent, before Hammond went off for a cup of tea with the site’s owner. At one point, Clarkson
pulled out an AK-47 rifle, which he felt he might need for a weekend away with James May.

After a bad night’s sleep, the next morning they went for a country walk with a grumpy Clarkson moaning about boredom; eventually they stopped to use their binoculars to spot interesting cars on a nearby A-road. On their return, Clarkson rustled up some food … only to set fire to the caravan! After various abortive attempts to put out the blaze, the next-door tent also catches fire. Eventually they make a swift exit as fire crews and sirens blare out, as if to advertise their stupidity. So, an advert for the joys of caravanning this was not.

Notably, this particular feature did attract criticism in some quarters for being a little too scripted and forced; the team happily admit the ‘accidental’ caravan fire was staged for dramatic effect and that they paid the Emergency Services around £1,000 to attend the filming. Frankly, who cares? It was hilarious!

Later, when appearing on the comic TV show
Room 101
– where guests list certain items they hate – Clarkson sent a shower of things he detested into oblivion, including flies,
The Last Of The Summer Wine
, club-house snobbery at golf courses, vegetarians and … caravans! (Comedian Sean Lock later put Clarkson himself in his own selection for oblivion.)

Of course kids in the post-Millennial world of stringent Health and Safety Regulations aren’t always allowed to play conkers. The
Top Gear
presenters might possibly argue that the same ban should apply to adults driving caravans …