top gear..

so. there has been much hulabaloo in the AC world about this British show coming to america.. the Aceman is to be the main host... i know the show has been on BBC america for quite some time, but i've never checked it out.. so i started DVRing it.. i've seen a couple of times now, and it's an interesting show at the very least.. some of the things are of little to no interest to me (non car fanatic) but some of the segments are pretty good.. like, they have celebrities on, and interview them, and make them drive an average car (think toyota carolla) around their track for time. i saw james blunt... they usually highlight a certain unattainable car that the average person will never ever be able to afford. some of the cars last night were like hundreds of thousands of pounds. i'm not really interested in that part since i have never heard of any of the cars they are highlighting..

but the show i saw last night had the 3 hosts each buy a British Leyland model of their choice from the 70's and they took them through a series of tests. the one that i liked the most was the one where they sealed each of the hosts in the car with a snorkle that was sticking out a hole they cut in the roof, and filled the cars full to the roof of water.. then they had to start driving around the track until the water leaked out and dipped below the bottom of the steering wheel. it was pretty awesome to see them driving around this course with water pouring out all the seams. they also ran them over a course that was pure hellish cobblestones designed to see how the cars stood up.. it was great to see all kinds of things fall off these cars as they drove at 50mph over them, side mirrors, doors, bumpers.. i hope they do that kind of thing with all kinds of cars not just 70's BL cars.

so in short, if you have BBC america and a DVR, tapes some episodes.. it's not a bad show.