Top Gear’s front man Jeremy Clarkson appeared on The One Show to chat about many things, including his DVD and of course TG’s latest voyage.

And he revealed a few details on the 2012 Christmas special program in which the guys go on a tour of India apparently to see if they can help with improving UK trade balance with the Asian country! Jezza drives a Jaguar XJS in this trip, Richard a MINI, and James an old Roller.

Check out a part of Jeremy’s interview in this video below, and check out Andy Wilman’s blog post if you want more details on Top Gear India Special, to be aired December 28.

“Due to the unique way the BBC is funded” they are apparently not very happy with TomTom Top Gear Satnav.

The satnav in question features Jeremy Clarkson’s voice and also the Stig. The device had been greenlit by BBC’s commercial arm, but now the Worldwide service has come to play saying Calrkson and Top Gear are not allowed to endorse car-related products, due to some of the BBC’s editorial guidelines saying that presenters “must take particular care not to endorse any product or service which could be covered in the programmes on which they work”.

Come to think of it, Jeremy is not really endorsing the satnav, he’s just lending them his voice! But they are forced by the corporation’s editorial policy advisers to ditch the deal altogether.

Now TomTom is the one suffering the most from this “monumental cock-up” according to a BBC executive, as they’ve already produced 54,000 units of this £189 satnav. TomTom is not going to get the money they paid to BBC back by the looks of things, as they decided to donate all the money involved to BBC Children in Need.

This whole thing has been a waste of time for Jezza too, because he’s not going to get paid now that the deal is canceled.

Source: Telegraph

Here’s something to get you through Christmas, you know, if you have nothing else to do. Jeremy Clarkson’s new DVD is ready, almost, and will be available from November 7.

This new one is called “Powered Up” and the location for it is Southern France and the prestigious Paul Ricard circuit. Seeing as it happens almost entirely in the race track, there will be lots of sports cars power test, including a long one with BAC Mono and Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok. But this being Jeremy, he can’t finish a show without blowing up something or wrecking a few cars, for fun.

Here’s a trailer to get your engines revving:

Props to Jalopnik.com

TomTom and Top Gear collaborated on making the TomTom GO LIVE Top Gear edition which makes finding your destination a more fun.

Being a Top Gear satnav, this device lists interesting items such as race tracks along with all the usual TomTom Live services which cover location of speed cameras, shops, etc, and also provides HD traffic and weather forecast. The device comes with one year free subscription of LIVE Services and HD Traffic.

Top Gear satnav has two operating modes, Jeremy Clarkson mode and the Stig mode. In Stig mode the device become like the man himself, completely silent. In Jezza mode though, it becomes quite loud as Clarkson’s voice guide you to your destination. There couldn’t be a James May mode, for obvious reasons!

TomTom GO LIVE Top Gear is priced at £189.

As you may know in Forza 4 Top Gear is heavily featured, and so is Mr. Clarkson. In this new trailer for the game, narrated by Jeremy, he talks to the petrolheads in a language that only petrolheads understand. And since it’s JC’s trailer what other car could they use than the lovely DB9. It’s a bit sad though, this ad, as it reminds you the days of having fun in the real world is over and you have to resort to your Xbox for some unreal action.

Watch the video after the jump.

It may sound a little excessive that Jeremy Clarkson and James May took over a a Boeing 747 from the Top Gear track at Dunsfold Park, Surrey, to jump-start the Top Gear Live ‘Prototype’ World Tour, but then it’s going to be the most exciting, ambitious and complex automotive stage show anywhere, ever! As you notice Richard Hammond is not present, apparently he misheard Dunsfold for Dublin! according to Jezza…

Playing to over 300,000 spectators across seven cities around the world, the brand-new celebration of automotive utopia launches in London on 4th November at the MPH Prestige & Performance Motor Show powered by Shell V-Power.

“Car stunt shows used to involve standing in rain soaked concrete car parks watching men in branded hats driving round in circles,” said Clarkson. “But Top Gear Live continues to prove that proper theatre with cars is possible and yet again, we’ve pushed the boundaries of car theatre for this ‘Prototype Tour’. It’s ambitious, but for once, it isn’t complete rubbish.”

Top Gear Live will feature some of the world’s most expensive, powerful and absurdly modified cars. Stars of the show will include the first ever transparent car, Porsches transformed beyond all recognition and a custom made “Godzilla” Nissan GT-R going head-to-head with a police helicopter. Indoors.

By the time the ‘Prototype Tour’ ends in March 2011, the tireless Top Gear Live team will have performed various versions of their arena spectacular to more than 1 million fans since their launch.

Clarkson, Hammond and May will add their usual dose of juvenile bickering to proceedings on the UK leg in London (November 4th-7th) and then the Birmingham NEC (November 11th-14th), after which the tour takes off to entertain the rest of the world.

Planned destinations include:

London, Earls Court 4-7th Nov 2010
Birmingham, NEC 11-14th Nov 2010
Dublin, CityWest Event Centre, 26-28th Nov 2010
Brisbane, Brisbane Entertainment Centre, 3 – 6 Mar 2011
Melbourne, Melbourne Showgrounds, 11-14 Mar 2011
Jo’burg, Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit, 17-20 Mar 2011
Oslo, venue tbc, 24-27 Mar 2011

While all of the media giants all around the world couldn’t talk to any of the Top Gear crew regarding The Stig situation, Witney TV managed to secure an exclusive interview with Jeremy Clarkson after a charity auction he was hosting. Jezza talks about Ben Collins and how this greedy man hurt him, how he used to come to his house and have drinks while he was writing the book! He also confirms that Collins is sacked and there will be a brand-new Stig for the next series, even though they have not decided yet. They are still in a bit of shock, but they’ll be back. “Top Gear is damaged, but not out” says the man!

When BMW X1 was revealed we reviewed it and said that the car does not make much sense since it’s like a jacked up 1-Series with an ugly face and poor off-road capabilities. And that you are much better off buying a Japanese crossover which offers you more value for less money. At that time many BMW fans got annoyed and wrote to us complaining that we know nothing! Now, this weekend Jeremy Clarkson in his column in Times has reviewed the X1, and he humiliates it! Jezza’s verdict is that the X1 is not a car, it’s rubbish. And he knows what he’s talking about.

Hit the jump to read his review. The first nine paragraphs are about books and films and stuff, so you can skip them!

From Timesonline:

Buying a book to read on holiday is very much like buying a car. There’s a huge and bewildering choice and you are torn about what it is, exactly, that you want. If you are a man, you will know to avoid books called Tractors in the Ukraine and Appleblossom because it’ll be a plotless churn through the life of some dizzy bint who has lost her hat. You will not enjoy reading it and other people on the beach will laugh at you.

What you want, of course, is a book in which a chisel-jawed agent called Clint Thrust attempts to find a hoard of Nazi gold while under attack from a madman’s fleet of nuclear-powered hunter-killer minisubs. But unfortunately, while this will be engrossing and wonderful, the cover will feature a girl in a bikini, a gold ingot with a swastika on it and a speedboat leaping through an explosion of some kind. This, too, will make you a laughing stock around the pool.

An autobiography, then, seems to be the answer. You look wise. You look like you are interested in other people. And often the story of someone else’s life is fascinating. Unfortunately, the sort of people who have fascinating lives tend not to have time to write autobiographies because they are too busy up the Okavango, rescuing elephants with the sultan of Brunei. This means, therefore, that if you choose to read an autobiography, it will be about someone who is stupid, orange and about 12.

You see the problem. Much like when you buy a car, you want something that is interesting … but crucially, you want it to make you look interesting when people see you reading it. Achieving this is hard. But, boy oh boy, did I pull off a blinder for my bucket-and-spade holiday reading this Easter.

It’s by a chap called Cormac McCarthy, it’s called The Road and it’s just been made into a film. But news of this development hasn’t yet reached the hill towns of the Cotswolds, so consequently, the cover on the version I bought did not feature a picture of Viggo Mortensen and a sticker saying: “Now a major motion picture.” The cover was good. It looked intelligent.

But the bit inside was even better. It begins with a man and a boy walking down a road in cold weather. And it ends with a man and a boy walking down a road in cold weather. In between, not much happens. But it was brilliant. Even though it is not much thicker than a pamphlet and no longer than a warning notice on a train’s lavatory door, it took me nearly a week to read. I kept going back over some of the phrases thinking: “That didn’t work.” But they do work.

I’m not sure Cormac McCarthy would be much fun as a dinner guest and neither would I seek his company after the death of a loved one or a family pet, but, God Almighty, the man can write. I read the damn thing on a beach in Barbados and it made me feel so cold I had to go and get a jumper.

My wife thought I’d gone mad. So she read it when I’d finished and when she got to the end she went and sat by herself for a while and sobbed.

Not everyone will have heard of The Road or its author. It’s a hidden jewel. It sits in the bookshops like the BMW 135i sits in the dealership: a genuine pearl, lost in a sea of razzmatazz and Day-Glo promises.

I like the BMW 135i very much. It has no styling and no big USP. It’s just some car. But it’s the most faithful BMW of them all. Simple. Six-cylinder engine up front. Rear drive. It’s built for the road. It is The Road.

That’s why I was quite looking forward to trying the new BMW X1. There are a lot of so-called crossover quasi-off-road, urban SUV cars around at the moment and none of them is really any good. They offer no more space than a normal hatchback and they are no more rugged, but they cost more to buy, they use more fuel and — with the exception of the Ford Kuga — they are all preposterously ugly.

I felt BMW might be able to pull off a bit of a winner, then. It had learnt some lessons with the woeful X3 and it really has got styling worked out these days. Plus, BMWs are almost always better to drive than any of the cars with which they compete.

Sadly, I was to be disappointed. First of all, the X1 looks like a Hyundai that’s been subjected to a thousand years of wind erosion. It’s dreary. And it’s much the same story on the inside, where you are greeted with lots of extremely scratchy plastic and almost no equipment at all. You want a built-in sat nav system? Well, tough.

A friend of mine, who runs the car I drove, says that the wiring loom is cheap as well. Quite how he’s determined this, I have no idea, but there you are. It’s cheap to look at, cheap to sit in and cheap to touch. But it’s not even slightly cheap to buy.

No matter, you might think. It’ll be a stormer on the road. Well, yes, it might be if you could buy it with a creamy six-cylinder petrol engine. But you can’t. Instead, sir can have it with any engine he likes, so long as it’s a diesel. Normally, BMW diesels are rather good, but the 2-litre version fitted to the X1 is not. It sounds like a dump truck when you start it up, and any request from the helm for more speed is met with a recalcitrant, “You want to do what?”

It’s very uncomfortable as well. The ride is much too rigid and the seats are very nearly as firm as those fitted to a Ford Galaxy. Which means they are hard enough to shape diamonds. That’s nice if you actually want to shape diamonds, but if you just want a comfy place to sit while you go home, the X1 won’t do.

Off-road work? Well, yes, there is a four-wheel-drive version, which should be all right on farm tracks and the like, but the car I drove was fitted with something called sDrive. That sounds exciting. It sounds like the sort of system Captain Scarlet would have used to fight the Mysterons. But no. For some extraordinary reason, sDrive means rear-wheel drive.

Now I like rear-wheel drive. Rear-wheel drive makes a car feel better balanced than front-wheel drive, or even four-wheel drive. It’s right that the front wheels do the steering and those at the rear the propulsion. It’s why BMWs always feel so proper. But I can’t see the point of such a system in a tall car with the engine from a canal boat under the bonnet.

It robs space, adds cost and means that if we get another snowy winter, you won’t even get out of your drive. I fear the marketing men have insisted this car has rear drive even though it makes no sense at all. The whole package doesn’t, if I’m honest.

If it were a book, it would have no plot and a stupid cover and it would fall to pieces in the sun. But it isn’t a book. And neither is it a car. It’s rubbish.

The wait is almost over as the world’s best motoring show,Top Gear is coming back on telly in less than two weeks. Unfortunately there will be only seven episodes in this new series, rather than the usual ten it used to be in the early days but it’ll be pure motoring  joy all the way! Specially as they come to UAE for the first time and go berserk with some really high-end supercars. The producer Andy Wilman has already blogged about the upcoming series, describing it as “The Same Old ****” ! Read it in full after the jump…

It’s Back! The Waiting is Over! This Summer’s Blockbuster is Here! Be Afraid… etc etc. The reason I’m borrowing so many tired and tested one liners from your local multiplex foyer is quite simple: I’m trying to distract viewers from what the title of the actual film would be, were this new series an actual film. It would be Top Gear 13, which sounds like something with Dolph Lungdren in it, or bad hotel porn.

Using maths, I’ve calculated that the next series will be called Top Gear 14, and that’s even worse.

So I’ve come up with a genius plan; instead of going forwards, we’re going to make the next series a prequel. It’s working brilliantly for Star Trek, Batman and The Terminator, so why can’t we do the same?

I think viewers would be fascinated to know which Christmas it was when James’s mum gave him that pink striped jumper. They would love to see Jeremy shout “Powerrrrrrrrrrr!” during his driving test, and they would be equally rivetted to witness Richard staring at the pencil marks on the Height Chart in his bedroom and muttering “bollocks!”.

In the meantime though, you’re stuck with the well-known formula, which means that over the coming seven-week series run a race or two will occur, supercars will slide from the left of your telly screen to the right of your telly screen in a cloud of tyre smoke, and a man in a white coat bearing a gold envelope will trigger a series of comedic and juvenile adventures.

Please don’t worry about the familiarity though, because I, the most grumpy, pessimistic, glass-half-empty Producer in television, am really looking forward to this series.

Obviously back in March when we were gearing up to film, I was moaning about how we’d dried up, how people will see through us this time, one-trick pony blah blah, and then one night, I had an epiphany, which happened not in a pentecostal church but at the O2 Arena.

Basically Hammond, May and I went to see AC/DC, and there they were, nine thousand years old, still making your ears bleed with the same pulverising ferocity they managed three decades ago, and you think to yourself, it doesn’t matter if your pony has one trick as long as it does that trick really, really well, and more importantly, it really cares every time it performs that trick. And immodestly, I can say to you all, we still really, really care about what we do.

The fire we have inside about giving you good telly burns as fiercely as it did in 2002. So sit back and enjoy Top Gear 13, the same old shit.

In his ‘Thrill’ DVD, Jeremy Clarkson tested Porsche 911 GT3 and he said that this car won’t tolerate fools. Moments later he crashed it! For making this promo film of new 2010 GT3, Porsche asked Walter Rohrl, former rally champion and head of their factory drivers to have a go in it. That’s the only reason you might wanna watch the video, otherwise you really wouldn’t because the car is exactly same as old one! Of course he is not pushing the car to its limits but it’s still a nice piece of driving.

Jay Kay’s beloved black Ferrari Enzo has got a bad hit by an angry chef in Suffolk, UK. Of course Jay can afford to replace the broken windows, but he must be, understandably, very upset. He loves this car so much that he didn’t lend it to Top Gear for a test drive!

Actually when Jeremy Clarkson rang him to borrow this car, JK said “Yes if I can borrow your daughter because it amounts to the same thing!”.

Aaron Billington a pastry chef from Aldeburgh is the person responsible for this brutal attack, who is now released on bail. This kind of vandalism is getting popular around the world! In last two months several identical attacks have been reported, leaving some of the finest exotic cars badly damaged.

source: GTspirit

Jeremy Clarkson was right when he said your Porsche 911 will finally kill you some day and here’s the proof. It killed its own professional factory driver! 51-year-old engineer took a cabrio protorype for a night run in A5 autobahn but unfortunately it went badly wrong leaving the man dead. Apparently the driver lost control of the car and it wedged under the barrier killing the man. Witnesses say the driver was doing fairly high speed since this stretch on A5 has no speed limit. Another test driver was behind him in a Panamera who managed to evade the accident and escaped unharmed.

Whatever caused the crash, there is a dead man here and it really affects Porsche’s image. I just wonder what would happen if he was driving the new GT2! He’d probably be killed !! And I can’t wait for Jeremy Clarkson commenting on this.

R.I.P to the man.

Top Gear guys are in Australia ( only Jezza and Hamster, save the captain slow, according to Jeremy he would be lost and killed if he’d come!) to promote the Top Gear Live event and they’ve attend an interview where they’ve talked about many things! Jeremy, just what a cool guy he is! and he is also twice as funny here! You gotta watch this video. [via : carsguide.com.au]

The recent stupid campaign to reveal Stig’s identity finally made Jeremy Clarkson to make a statement! He believes that unmasking the Stig will just spoils everyone’s fun. And he is totally right, what difference does it make if you know he’s Ben Collins or Damon Hill or Tiff Needell or…?! Follow the jump to read Jeremy Clarkson’s answer to this …

And immediately, the internet was awash with claims and counter claims.

“They’re wrong. There is no single Stig. There are four. The main one is Damon Hill. It’s Tiff Needell.

“No it’s not. I’ve got a mate who knows for sure it’s Michael Schumacher.” The frenzy has become so intense that even Top Gear researchers are being followed by the paparazzi. One was even outed in a national newspaper as the man in the white suit.

And because of that, I’ve decided it’s time to come clean. For still photographs, there are indeed many Stigs. But there is only one who is ever allowed to drive round the track.

And – here goes – it’s the BBC royal reporter Nicholas Witchell.

I know. I know. It’s a big surprise but there you are.

And now you know, I’m afraid he will have to be dropped from a Hercules transport plane and killed. Worse, because the secret is out, the Telegraph will have to find another big secret to expose.

Might I suggest they look into Doctor Who’s Tardis because I’m willing to bet it really isn’t as big inside as the BBC claim.

Then they could explain to their younger readers that there is no such thing as Father Christmas. “It’s your Dad kids. Get used to it.”

from : Jeremy’s column in Sun

If you live in planet Earth you’ve probably seen last Top Gear season and the episode they reviewed battery powered car Tesla Roadster. They broke two of this car on the track and also mocked the car alot, then guys of Tesla respond on the Internet that it was all fake and blah blah blah! Clarkson however is not letting it go easily! Looks like Tesla messed with the wrong guy! Follow the jump to read his latest statement about the car in which you realize that Tesla is only good for … !

Mostly, the world’s car makers realise that I’m a harmless piece of navel fluff whose opinions make absolutely no difference to their hopes and dreams. But occasionally, threatening noises are made if they think I’ve been unfair.

Once, many years ago, Renault in France told the people who run its operation in Britain to pull all its advertising from the BBC. “Zis will show zem,” said a red-in-the-face Jean-Claude, unaware presumably that the BBC carried no advertising.

And then there was Toyota, which, after I compared its 1990s Corolla, unfavourably, with a fridge freezer, refused to lend me any more demonstrators until I accepted it was, in fact, the best car in the world and as important as the second coming.

Vauxhall was similarly argumentative about its then new Vectra, and SSangYong in effect banned me from driving its cars in the first place. When I asked its PR man if I could borrow a Rexton recently, he said: “No. We have other priorities.”

If he’d been on fire at the time he took the call, I could understand this. Because, yes, finding a pool into which he could jump to put himself out would be a higher priority than talking to me. But other than this, I cannot think what might be a higher priority for a car-company PR man than fixing up a date when a motoring journalist could try out a new product.

Oh, and I can never forget a letter sent by the public-relations man at BMW to The Sunday Times saying that my dislike of BMWs had nothing to do with their drivers’ pushy attitude, their silly sunglasses, their awful short-sleeved shirts, their hair gel, their orange wives, their awful houses, their fondness for golf and their membership of the Freemasons, and everything to do with the fact I had a garage full of free Jaguars.

Mostly, though, all is calm. I don’t talk to the car makers. They don’t talk to me. I simply borrow their cars. I write about them. They go back whence they came and, whether I’ve been kind, indifferent or wrong, the world continues to turn.

All of which brings me on to the curious case of the battery-powered Tesla sports car that I reviewed recently on Top Gear. Things didn’t go well. The company claimed it could run, even if driven briskly, for 200 miles, but after just a morning the battery power was down to 20% and we realised that it would not have enough juice for all the shots we needed.

Happily, the company had brought a second car along, so we switched to that. But after a while its motor began to overheat. And so, even though the first was not fully charged, we unplugged it — only to find that its brakes weren’t working properly. So then we had no cars.

Inevitably, the film we had shot was a bit of a mess. There was a handful of shots of a silver car. Some of a grey car. And only half the usual gaggle of nonsense from me shouting “Power” and making silly metaphors. And to make matters worse, we had the BBC’s new compliance directive hanging over us like an enormous suffocating blanket. We had to be sure that what we said and what we showed was more than right, more than fair and more than accurate.

Phone calls were made. Editorial policy wallahs were consulted. Experts were called in. No “i” was left undotted. No “t” was left uncrossed. No stone remained unturned in our quest for truth and decency.

Tesla could not complain about what was shown because it was there. And here’s the strange thing. It didn’t. But someone did. Loudly and to every newspaper in the world. The Daily Telegraph said we’d been caught up in a new fakery row. The Guardian accused us of being “underhanded”. The New York Times wondered if we’d been “misleading”. The Daily Mail said I could give you breast cancer.

This was weird. Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn’t question at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles.

So who was driving this onslaught? Nobody in the big wide world ever minds when I say a BMW 1-series is crap or that a Kia Rio is the worst piece of machinery since the landmine. And yet everyone went mad when I said the Tesla, the red-blooded sports car and great white hope for the world’s green movement, “absolutely does not work”.

I fear that what we are seeing here is much the same thing professors see when they claim there is no such thing as man-made global warming. Immediately, they are drowned out by an unseen mob, and then their funding dries up. It’s actually quite frightening.

The problem is, though, that really and honestly, the US-made Tesla works only at dinner parties. Tell someone you have one and in minutes you will be having sex. But as a device for moving you and your things around, it is about as much use as a bag of muddy spinach.

Yes, it is extremely fast. It’s all out of ideas at 125mph, but the speed it gets there is quite literally electrifying. For instance, 0 to 60 takes 3.9sec. This is because a characteristic of the electric motor, apart from the fact it’s the size of a grapefruit and has only one moving part, is massive torque.

And quietness. At speed, there’s a deal of tyre roar and plenty of wind noise from the ill-fitting soft top, but at a town-centre crawl it’s silent. Eerily so. Especially as you are behind a rev counter showing numbers that have no right to be there — 15,000, for example.

Through the corners things are less rosy. To minimise rolling resistance and therefore increase range, the wheels have no toe-in or camber. This affects the handling. So too does the sheer weight of the 6,831 laptop batteries, all of which have to be constantly cooled.

But slightly wonky handling is nothing compared with this car’s big problems. First of all, it costs £90,000. This means it is three times more than the Lotus Elise, on which it is loosely based, and 90,000 times more than it is actually worth.

Yes, that cost will come down when the Hollywood elite have all bought one and the factory can get into its stride. But paying £90,000 for such a thing now indicates that you believe in goblins and fairy stories about the end of the world.

Of course, it will not be expensive to run. Filling a normal Elise with petrol costs £40. Filling a Tesla with cheap-rate electricity costs just £3.50. And that’s enough to take you — let’s be fair — somewhere between 55 and 200 miles, depending on how you drive.

But if it’s running costs you are worried about, consider this. The £60,000 or so you save by buying an Elise would buy 15,000 gallons of fuel. Enough to take you round the world 20 times.

And there’s more. Filling an Elise takes two minutes. Filling a Tesla from a normal 13-amp plug takes about 16 hours. Fit a beefier three-phase supply to your house and you could complete the process in four (Tesla now says 3½). But do not, whatever you do, imagine that you could charge your car from a domestic wind turbine. That would take about 25 days.

You see what I mean. Even if we ignore the argument that the so-called green power that propels this car comes from a dirty great power station, and that it is therefore not as green as you might hope, we are left with the simple fact that it takes a long time to charge it up and the charge doesn’t take you very far. We must also remember that both the cars I tried went wrong.

In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that the Tesla can be honed and chiselled and developed to a point where the problems are gone. But time is one thing a car such as this does not have.

Because while Tesla fiddles about with batteries, Honda and Ford are surging onwards with hydrogen cars, which don’t need charging, can be fuelled normally and are completely green. The biggest problem, then, with the Tesla is not that it doesn’t work. It’s that even if it did, it would be driving down the wrong road.

The Clarksometer
ENGINE 375v AC electric motor powered by lithium-ion battery unit
POWER 185kW / 248bhp @ 8000rpm
TORQUE 276 lb ft @ 0rpm
TRANSMISSION Two-speed manual
FUEL / CO2 n/a
ACCELERATION 0-60mph: 3.9sec
TOP SPEED 130mph
PRICE €99,000 (£90,000)
ROAD TAX BAND A (free)
RELEASE DATE EU model available this year

Clarkson’s verdict
I suppose it’s good for your sex life!

source : Clarkson column in Times Via thetruthaboutcars

Jeremy Clarkson endorses Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 as his 2008 Car Of The Year. Despite being American and made out of recycled plastic and low build quality, Jezza believes it is just a surprise since it delivers Ferrari performance for almost half the price. ZR1 is powered by a small block V8 LS9 caret engine which develops 638bhp and 604 lb ft of torque. Follow the jump to read Jeremy’s article…

It’s been a quiet year for the world’s motor industry. There have been no wrecks, nobody drowning; in fact, nothing to laugh at at all. But, hidden in the sea of normality and business as usual, were a couple of gems.

We start with the BMW X6, which must receive my inaugural What Were They Thinking Of award. Have you seen one? No, and I doubt you ever will because in a world that’s plagued with recession and run by people who believe the world’s polar bears are up at the North Pole sipping pina coladas and slapping on the factor five, it is surely the most inappropriate piece of corporate thinking since Sir Clive Sinclair said: “Yes. The electric slipper. That’s what people want . . .”

However, I cannot say the BMW X6 is the worst car of the year, partly because I have not yet driven it and partly because it cannot possibly be worse than the Chrysler Sebring Convertible. Unless it smells of slurry and the radio is jammed on Rap FM.

The Sebring is an extraordinary car. Ugly to behold and hateful to drive, it is not cheap, elegant, comfortable, practical, prestigious, clever, economical, luxurious, well designed, well thought out or, if the rental car I drove in America this year is anything to go by, especially well made either. Perhaps this is why the boss of Chrysler chose to go to Washington in his private jet. He knew that if he used a Sebring, it would break down on the way. Or worse, it would get there and he’d be a laughing stock among his business-mates from Ford and General Motors.

Strangely, however, the Chrysler is not the worst car I drove all year. That accolade rests with the diesel-powered Kia Sedona people carrier.

With the Sebring, you get the impression that the designers and engineers couldn’t be bothered to make a good car. With the Sedona you are left with the distinct impression they simply didn’t know how.

I cannot conceive of how empty, pointless and lacking in ambition or style your life must be for the Sedona to be a solution. It is like alcohol-free beer, a pointless car-free facsimile of the real thing, and as a result, it can have no place in the life of a sentient being.

The biggest disappointment of the year is a closely fought contest between any number of cars but the winner is Audi’s RS 6. It promises much and on a racetrack it delivers a great deal. But to buy a five-seat estate car simply because it’s so fluent through Becketts is like going out to buy a pet goldfish and coming home with a horse “because it’s so good over the Chair”.

The drawbacks you will encounter in real life are too endless. The uncomfortable seating, the weird steering and a very real sense that in a car like this, 572bhp is a lot more than you will ever need. It’s said you can’t be too beautiful or too rich but you can have too much power. Because one minute you’ll be overtaking a lorry and the next you’ll go mad and want to invade Poland.

Other disappointments are mostly centred on cars which aren’t really as good as others that do broadly the same thing. The Ford Kuga, for instance, is not as good as the Volvo XC60 and the Renault Twingo Renaultsport is not as good as a Fiat 500 Abarth. And then there’s the Vauxhall Insignia, which is massively better than the Vectra it replaces. But not quite as good as the Ford Mondeo. And who says: “Right. What I want to buy is the second-best four-door saloon with no badge prestige”? Actually, come to think of it; who wants to buy the best?

My main gripe of the year, though, rests with seat designers who have got it into their heads that we only like leather – there’s really nothing wrong with pleblon, especially on a day that’s hot or cold, and doubly especially if there are any corners between your house and your place of work.

Worse, though, they seem to think that what we really want are seats in our cars that are less comfortable than those in our kitchens. I know that cod liver oil is good for you. I also know you will go to heaven if you only eat weeds and you spend your evenings embroidering kneelers for the local church. But we are not all vegi-vicars. That is why we don’t wear hair shirts and it’s why we want the seats in our cars to have a bit of give. Are you listening, Vauxhall? Are you listening, Ford? Go and find yourself an old Renault Fuego Turbo. Check out the bean bags it came with and you’ll know what I’m on about.

And now we shall move on to the good stuff from the past 12 months. On television recently, I said the best car from the year was the Caterham R500 but it’s important to remember that the criterion we were looking for was very specific. The winner had to do more than you could reasonably expect for the money.

The Nissan GT-R was a contender because it costs almost half as much as a Porsche 911 Turbo and yet around the Nürburgring – and such things do matter with cars like this – it is faster. Then you have the VW Scirocco, which costs, as near as makes no difference, the same as the Golf GTI on which it is based. And yet it’s so much more desirable. But the winner had to be the little Caterham, which is faster round the Top Gear track than the Bugatti Veyron . . . even though it costs about 30 times less.

However, if you broaden the search engine and look simply for the best car of the year, the Caterham isn’t in with a shout because it’s ugly and geeky and I wouldn’t have one even if the option was the loss of my right testicle.

Best car, then? Hmmm. You cannot discount the Rolls-Royce Phantom drophead because it is exquisite in almost every way. Nor can we ignore the Fiat 500 Abarth because it’s just so bouncy and wonderful and so full of enthusiasm. I don’t think it would be possible to be in a bad mood while driving this car. And soon there will be a 200bhp version with a spoiler the size of Middlesex on the roof. That’ll make the Mini Cooper look like a brogue.

However, the car I’ve selected wins because it’s just such a surprise.

Over the years there have been a great many Corvettes, and none of them, if we’re honest, have been any good. Oh, there have been some fast ones and some with great charisma. Mostly, they have been pretty as well. But to drive? No. They were the automotive equivalent of Big Macs. Cheap, plastic and at the right time, and in the right place, sort of just what you want. But like I said. Just no.

And then out of nowhere came the ZR1, which has a supercharged V8 that manages to be both docile and extraordinarily savage all at the same time. I’ve been trying to think of a dog that pulls off a similar trick, but there isn’t one. And anyway, this car is not a dog.

Oh, it’s not built very well. After just three days in my care, the boot lock disintegrated and the keyless go system refused to acknowledge the keys were in the car, but I didn’t mind because there is simply no other car that looks this good, goes this fast – in a straight line and around corners – and that most of the time bumbles about like a forgetful uncle. And when you throw in the price tag of just £106,690 – lots for a Corvette but modest next to a similarly powerful Ferrari – the case for the defence can sit down and put up its feet knowing that the prosecutor simply has nowhere to go.

It is an epic car and I’m only sad that unless the healthcare and pensions company that makes it can be turned around, it will be the last of the breed.

Indeed, I worry that the next 12 months will bring us many wrecks, many drownings and absolutely nothing to laugh at at all. I shall therefore stop short of wishing you a prosperous new year. Instead, I shall hope that in our new-found poverty, we can still all be happy.

source : Jeremy Clarkson column in TIMES UK

While every single car maker is laying off staffs and shutting down factories, the news coming from United Kingdom is promising, at least for Ford it is! Britons have gone mad about the new Ford Fiesta and it’s selling like hot cake there, 150 units per day!

New Fiesta is a car of high values, no doubt about that. Starting at £8,514.26 it is very feature rich even in the basic model, and while a mid range model can cost up to £13,000 it is still better value than most of opponents, it is the perfect hatchback for modern Britain! However some say that recent Top Gear review of this car can be considered as a reason why people like this car so much. Jeremy Clarkson did a hilarious job with it, he raced a Corvette in a mall and drove off to the sea in a beach assault with Royal Marines! Now these are qualities a family usually expects form an average hatch back! The effect of Top Gear on car sales at least in Britain is undeniable, because people listen to their verdict of cars and believe them. So here you are, From now on you should judge a car’s market by Top Gear verdict about it!

Here is a video by GM performance parts, showing the assembly line of LS9 engine for Corvette ZR1. This brilliant engine, capable of producing 638 hp, is the most anticipated engine by GM to be launched. This even made Jeremy Clarkson admire it! You can order this engine for normal Corvettes too next year on.