Original subtitles

In tonight's programme, a supercar from a shed in Leicestershire.

A rock star in our reasonably-priced car.

And how many motorbikes can you jump with a bus?

But first, the 1960s.

Now, it was possible to go fast back then

if you had enough money to buy a Ferrari or a Maserati.

But then one day Ford thought, "Hang on a minute, we've got all these cars,

flooding down our production lines. Why don't we fit some of them with big engines?"

Now if you think about it, this was an incredibly important moment.

'Cause suddenly everyone could afford to go fast.

They actually created the boy racer.

Suddenly Mr Barrington-Smythe was going down

the motorway, he got overtaken by Barry Smith!

And we've actually been joined tonight by several members of the Ford RS Owners Club.

Here they are.

Let me give you a flavour of the kind of people who drive RS Fords, okay.

Your name is?

- Lee. - Lee, Okay.

Now, standing at the back there, we've got Wayne.

Okay, now Wayne's girlfriend - anyone want to hazard a guess what Wayne's girlfriend-

- Tracey! - Yeah!

A word of warning, though. A word of warning, okay,

which I've learned over the years,

never ever slag off a fast Ford.

'Cause these people don't write polite letters saying,

"Dear Sir, I strongly disagree with what you said on Top Gear the other night."

Just sling a brick!

Yeah, a brick with "Git" written on it comes through your window.

Bearing that in mind, Ford should be worried.

Because when they dropped the RS Escort Cosworth here,

they said there would be an RS version of the Focus.

They promised us it would have 300bhp and four-wheel drive. And here it is!

Now, it is quite a looker.

Well, it's better looking than your hair actually! Sorry mate!

- You got an RS? RS hairdo that! Fantastic. - I have mate, yeah.

Anyway, disappointingly, this doesn't have 300hp and four-wheel drive.

It has front-wheel drive and only 212bhp.

Still, we're going to be testing it out on our track.

But first of all, we thought it would be a good idea to have a look at the competition.

The most obvious contender is this, the Subaru Impreza.

So, we fitted it with The Stig and launched him onto our test track.

Whereas the Ford is a jumped-up road car,

this is a scaled-down rally car.

Turbo-charged engine, four-wheel drive.

Not the best looking car in the world, I admit.

And he crosses the line in...

Here we come now. One minute 39 seconds.

Next up is the Honda Civic Type-R.

Now, what you need to know about the Civic most of all is that my mother has one.

It's a mothery sort of car.

Except of course for this one, which is a mother of a car.

Is it gonna beat the Subaru? Is it gonna be faster? Crosses the line in...

one minute 38.06.

So the Honda WAS faster than the Subaru,

much to the disappointment of the Subaru Owners Club here, all five of them!

Who have been pointing out that if it was raining it all would've been different, but it wasn't and you lost.

You lost!

Anyway, now is the time to find out how the watered-down Ford gets on.

Traction control switched off and The Stig's away!

And this time, we're running telemetry. We can see what's going on with the car.

That's Christopher Cross. That's nice. Anyway, back to the telemetry.

On the left there we've got a map of the circuit.

On the right, in the centre there, there's a "G" meter.

That shows us how much G we're getting.

Down for acceleration, up for braking. Right and left obviously for cornering.

And that was nearly one G through there,

on the first corner.

That's amazing.

That's about as much as you could possibly generate.

Corvettes used to generate that much.

Now he's going through the Steady State corner.

45 miles an hour.

50, 60, 66 on the exit.

Foot hard down. Now a really fast car is

topping the ton before he has to brake.

Ninety...? Ooh, 99!

He didn't quite make the ton, as he brakes hard and into the Hammerhead.

It's a left, and then a really hard right's gonna make understeer,

everything understeers, except the Honda didn't and...

Ooh wow, he's gone a bit wide, though. He's wide on the way out, that's okay.

Now, flat out, is he gonna reach 100 here, is he

gonna lift? Is he gonna lift for the Follow-Through?

Changed up into fourth, and, yes, lifted there,

down to 80 miles an hour for the Follow-Through.

So he didn't follow through, into Bentley Bend.

Into Bentley Bend. And...

Again, this is gonna be the fastest part of the track. He's flat out through there,

flat out still, 100-, 102 miles an hour, that's very quick.

The Suzuki Liana's only doing 87. Through Bacharach.

Into the really tricky one where you spin all the power away.

Is it going to waste all that power?

How tidy is it, let's look? That's very tidy.

Well, there's one thing's for sure, the RS Owners Club

won't be poking dog mess through The Stig's letterbox after that performance.

One minute 33.8.

That's nearly four seconds faster than the Honda.

Four seconds! That's a week if you're a dog.

So, plainly I had to go and drive this car in the real world.

But where? Obviously it had to be somewhere with miles and miles of empty roads.

And that means finding somewhere on there where no-one wants to live.

Ha. Wales!

Sheep!

There are so many empty roads out here it's hard to know where to start.

Welcome then, to RS country!

Nothing but the odd woolly maggot to spoil the fun.

Sitting here, there's no evidence that I'm in something which

can nuke a Subaru Impreza.

Apart from the sporty seats and the start button and this hideous steering wheel,

which appears to have come from a Southall motorist discount store for £9.99,

it just feels like a normal three door Focus.

And um... it sounds like one too.

And like a normal Focus, there's no cup holder,

there's nowhere to put my can of piping hot coffee.

Even when you bury the throttle into the Dagenham deep pile,

there are still no real clues.

Obviously, it's fast. I mean,

anything with a two litre turbo-charged engine

pumping up 212bhp

isn't going to mooch around like a Saturday shop girl.

But...

it doesn't have the same straight line oomph

as a Subaru Impreza.

In fact, from 0-100mph, this is two seconds slower.

The reason why it was so fast round our track is simple.

This thing corners like it's in a cartoon.

Between the front wheels there's a new type of differential.

I won't bore you with how it works, but I will tell you this,

you can turn into any corner

at seemingly any speed and the front just goes.

Boof! Boof!

There's no fuss, no drama, no understeer. Just endless grip.

It's rather like one of those American Marines in a Hollywood movie.

No matter how suicidal the order, no matter how stupid, he just obeys.

"Sir. Yes, sir!"

"Run in front of all of those enemy guns over there." "Sir, yes, sir!"

Go round this hairpin bend at 150 mph.

"Sir, yes, sir!"

And it gets away with it, that's the joke. It does go round hairpin bends at 150 mph.

I have never driven a front-wheel drive car that drives so well.

I can't think of any car that grips so well.

And yet, this one is yours for less than £20,000.

So once again, Ford has delivered a supercar for supermarket prices.

This car does what all good RS Fords should do. It brings power to the people.

I mean, look at the badges you get in this one tiny area.

Brembo, RS, OZ Racing.

In clothing terms, that's like going around in a

pair of trousers that have been jointly designed

by Oswald Boateng, Alexander McQueen and Paul Smith.

So, a fantastic car in every way then...

No. Afraid not.

It's not the very firm ride.

I don't mind the very firm ride.

In fact, the only people who are going to mind are those with osteoporosis.

And people who are old enough to have osteoporosis will never buy a car

that has a steering wheel like this.

Especially as it won't pick up Radio Two.

The horror!

I might have to listen to Radio One!

The radio and the ride though are nothing compared to what happens when you turn off

a nice smooth A-road like this and head for somewhere like Yu-uk-vi-yaa...

On a bumpy, twisty road

like this one, the differential causes the front wheels to squirm and writhe.

It's awful.

It's like riding around on an angry horse.

That's not me making it duck and weave. It's doing it itself.

Relax your grip or your concentration for a second

on a rural road,

and you'll end up in a sheep!

I used to have an Escort Cosworth I'm a huge fan of RS Fords.

And I respect what they've done with this. As a piece of engineering, it's brilliant.

It's so good in fact that I'm going to let the cameraman take it back to the Top Gear bunker.

And me, I'm going to go in the Subaru.

Or, as they say in Wales, where of course they're allergic to vowels,

the S-ssch-bbb-zzz!

- What was wrong with it? - I'll tell you what's wrong with it.

Is that the diff, ok? When you accelerate, say to pull out to overtake someone to go

round a corner and you give it full throttle,

the diff just grabs the front wheels and you go in whatever direction they're pointing.

- You're joking! - You've no control. You're just sitting there going

"I am not strong enough to turn this wheel." And then,

If you run over a camber change or even a white line, it grabs the wheels and pulls you the other way.

- Super torque steer. - Yeah, so you lift off, and then it goes, "Oh, I'm not doing that anymore."

And you just wobble about! Honestly, if you had one of these, okay,

and then someone says,

"Where do you work?" you'd have to say, "Well, wherever it takes me!"

Thing is, no dealers in the UK have got these as demos, so if you want to buy one,

"If you go into an RS-you know, I wanna buy an RS Focus

but before I give you the money I wanna drive one."

You can't.

But I saw an ad the other day, someone was saying "Buy an RS Focus, £1,200 off list."

No? Obviously this is a bad plan.

Can't see that happening, it wouldn't have been a Ford dealer for sure

because, talking to the Ford dealers, they're forward sold till March, April.

That's probably a broker and to be honest, that's a spoof ad.

- It's what we used to do all the time. - Really?

Yeah, advertise something you haven't got. Phone will be red hot.

So he hasn't got any Focuses to sell?

I can't comment on this specific incident, but I'd be very surprised.

Yeah, how's it work? You phone up and say "I want the car," what's he gonna say?

Oh, thanks very much for phoning, yeah, let me take your name and number.

I'm very busy, I'll phone you back. Then they've got you.

Then they'll phone you back. "I'm phoning about the RS, okay, right, okay."

Um, take your credit card deposit, and then we'll phone you back all this kind of stuff.

Basically, all they want you to do is phone them.

And then at that point, as it gets closer and closer to the delivery,

chances are they'll say, "Oh well, actually we've got a slight delay

"and that car's been put back but I have got the option on another one,

"but it's gonna be closer to the list price."

You're not gonna lose the car for £1000, are you?

And that's it, you're suckered in.

What are you gonna do, March, April, when they say,

"We've got your new car, but it's list price."

You take it.

You take it, because if you go somewhere else, you're back of the queue again.

In The News this week, more news of Americans

becoming very, very gullible. This is a bit worrying actually.

I'm gonna quote direct from the press here.

The popularity of TV broadcasts of live high-speed car chases

has led to a dramatic rise in criminals trying to outrace pursuing officers.

This is Los Angeles.

In other words, they're surprised

that when you put these guys stealing cars and driving really

fast on the telly, more people do it.

You know, you can buy a beeper and it goes off when a chase is happening!

Whoo! There's one, I'll turn over and watch that!

And the Americans are surprised that more people are stealing cars. There are cases

of offenders waving to helicopters filming the pursuit and attempting spectacular...

"Get a load of this!"

And the thing is of course, they've got those big, powerful police cars.

It wouldn't work here, I don't think, because it would be like.

Your beeper going off, there's a medium speed police chase!

Chap in an Astra.

Anyway, other items in the news.

Car news. Vauxhall.

Boo!

I love Vauxhalls!

The one I particularly like is the Zafira.

It's the sort-of Astra-sized estate thing with seven seats,

and you can fold the back seats into the boot,

Well now, they've done it again with an even smaller one.

It's called the Me-reev-uh. An unpronounceable, meaningless name.

There it is. That's a Meriva. Only got five seats.

But the ones in the back will fold into the floor completely.

Or you can take the middle one out.

Oh, there's some shots of it here, look, from the Motor Show, which is happening at the NEC in Birmingham.

Look, they just fold into the floor and you can take the middle ones out. It's a fantastically clever piece of design.

Vauxhall, hopeless at everything but very good at seats!

No, they really are! I would-family cars, these are very good. Zafira and that. Very, very good.

Maybe they should make a range of furniture and forget the whole car thing.

Because your seats could fold into your floor in your living room, and you'd have loads of space,

and then if loads of people came round, you could fold 'em all out.

That's a very good idea. Vauxhall seating in your dining room.

Um, I've got a nice car coming up, Mazda RX8.

Which is going to be glorious. It's a rotary engine again which of course means it's only 1.3

and it develops 250bhp.

- Of course it's rotary, yeah, no... It's a Wankel thing, isn't it? - It is.

It's a Wankel thing.

- There's nothing funny about Wankel! - Wankel's cool.

It says here, that as a safety measure,

a safety measure, the rear doors-

Cause it's got these these rearwards opening doors.

The rear doors can only be opened when the front doors are open.

That's a safety measure. Which, if you think about it, that's not a safety measure.

That's a really nasty design fault.

'Cause it's shiny side down in a ditch,

you want to open all the doors pretty quick.

What I like is the optimism here in the press release. It says-

It's talking about the engine, right,

"With a name derived from the word genesis", derived from, so not similar,

they've called it the "Renesis".

What are we going to do? Start with "A". Aenesis, Benesis...

Could've started with a "P". Could've been bad, couldn't it? That close.

The VW... Touareg. Tw-Twa-

- We did evolve a technique for actually saying that. - Yeah. Yeah.

Touareg.

How can you not know? It's a Saharan tribe of people.

- The Touareg? - Yeah.

- I'm not gonna say it, but that's what it is. Touareg. - It's the-?

The Toua-I'll tell you what it is, it's a Porsche Cayenne with the word "Porsche" crossed out

and "Volkswagen" written in crayon.

The most amazing thing about that is the V10 diesel engine. Oh, I've nodded off.

I've just lost the... I said "diesel"... You say the word diesel

and my seat goes into recline mode.

- Can I mend this? - You're not gonna get that fixed again, now, you need-

Stop everything.

At the NEC this week...

Actually, stop everything, I'll tell you what I saw this morning.

- Go on. - Ready? I saw a bus on the M4 bus lane.

An actual bus?

For the first time in five years. It was,

it was an airport bus taking some stewardesses for a little light sex in London, but, it was a bus.

- Splendid. - "It's a bus!" You can see everyone crammed into those two lanes,

been there for four-and-a-half years.

- Finally one comes along. - It's worth their money then, it's big news.

Yes, exactly. It's a million quid, that cost.

Anyway, listen, the most important thing of the week apart from the bus,

is MG, okay? They have got a new car

at the motor show this week.

Here it is.

God, it's smoking badly. Like an early MG.

Anyway, this is it. Now I think

that is a fabulous looking car.

I think it's desperately, desperately ugly. But hey, that's my view.

You know those glasses you wear occasionally?

- Where are you on this? - Jeremy's there. There.

- The tall lanky fella over there? - Do you like it?

I'd have to see it in the flesh. No. There's too many grilles.

Was it designed by a heating engineer?

It's a fantastic looking car. It's a fantastic looking car.

Let's have a show of hands, where are we? Show of hands. Who thinks it's a fantastic looking car?

Who thinks it's ugly and got too many radiator grills?

- That's kind of a split, Jeremy. - That's 50-50. Anyway, okay, Well I'm gonna bring them round.

- Would you like to know about its engine? - Yes.

Well it's got a Mustang V8 under there.

No, it's not a very good engine, that. However,

you can get one standard tune and there's about three different levels of tune, okay,

- you can get one, 410 horsepower. - Well,

that's plenty. Yes.

£65,000, 410.

This is MG coming back. However,

they are selling a range of accessories which allow you to take that power up to...

Anyone want to guess?

- 550? 965 brake horsepower. - Yes!

That's 100 more than Michael Schumacher has in his Ferrari!

- In an MG! - In an MG!

This is astonishing. Do you know...

What staggers me about that car

- is they can't possibly have designed it in the time it's taken since BMW left. - No.

They must have had an underground production line that BMW,

when they were running it, never knew about.

"Vhat are zey doing in ze parade grounds?"

"I'm not doin' anything, mate, I'm just, er..."

"Vot iz this vaulting horse you have here?

"Have you looked underneath ze stove?" They had one there. And you can just about

imagine BMW leaving. You know, on the day,

"Ve have tried and ve have failed vis you people."

Ta-ra. Ta-ra mate.

Be good, thanks for coming.

"Right, break out that V8, get the supercharger, get the nitrous,

we'll get summit going 'ere.

"Get it started." They had that lot... All those cars they've done,

the ZTs and the ZRs and the ZSs, they had that

lot ready to go soon as BMW were out the door.

Good on 'em. Right, um, I feel the need for science coming on now, okay.

Now, how many times in our lives are we gonna have to watch some

insane loon, jumping over buses on a motorbike? You know, off a ramp?

It would be much more interesting, rather than jumping buses in a bike

big wow, to see how many bikes you can jump, with a bus. So we did.

We must nearly all of us remember, in 1978.

Eddie Kidd, legendary stunt motorcyclist,

and the inspiration behind a million scuffed elbows and bent pushbikes, jumped 14 buses.

But we wanted to do it differently.

We wanted to see what would happen if you jumped a bus over 14 bikes.

Now that would be something.

14 bikes, that's about 30 feet.

Okay, Eddie Kidd's jump was nearer 200 feet but then he wasn't doing it in a bus.

It's a 1970s Daimler Fleetline. 11-litre engine in cream and green,

the Ipswich livery. And it's a beauty.

And that's the set up. We honestly have no idea what's going to happen.

But then that's often the way with science.

Sometimes you've just got to have faith in your ideas.

Ah, the joy of prolonging that! Uh, we're going to do it.

We're gonna do it later on, okay, so we'll. Put you out of your misery. But I just thought,

I mean, how many bikes do you actually reckon it cleared?

- Seven. I reckon... - A million.

No, I reckon... I don't know this actually. I reckon... five.

Five? Okay, let's have a couple more suggestions.

- 29. - There were 14, you fool.

If it went back and did 'em again that wouldn't count. Right well look,

We'll take your bets over the next show in a few moments, we'll write some down, and you can win a... something.

- A packet of Werther's Originals. - Nice. Yes.

Now this, down here,

is the Noble M12 GTO.

Its plastic body is made in South Africa

by a company that makes plastic replicas of ACs for the American market.

It's then flown, in an aeroplane, to Leicestershire, where it's taken to a shed,

where a man called Lee fits it with a Mondeo engine.

Not a particularly promising start then.

But it's not a bad car. It's not a bad car at all.

It's quite a dainty looking little thing

but that huge wing on the back suggests it's no fairy cake.

It's much the same story in here.

It's very comfortable, lovely ride. I've got tons of space.

I've got air-conditioning, steering wheel adjust, it's nicely trimmed.

Look, they've even covered the roll cage in alcantara.

But listen.

It sounds like Darth Vader's in the boot.

"Where are the plans of the rebel base?

"Sister? Obi-Wan was wise to hide this from me."

What an extraordinary noise.

Ooh, I like that.

Actually, that's the sound of two turbos which have been glued

onto the Mondeo engine

to give it a bit more punch.

A lot more actually. If you floor the throttle, there's a bit of a pause

while the turbos build up. And then... Whoo!

0-60 takes 4.4 seconds and then it'll wheeze its way

to 165 miles an hour... which it's doing now!

This is a quick car.

But actually it's not the power or the looks which set the Noble apart.

It's the way it goes round corners.

You've probably heard people prattling on

about the Ferrari 355 or the Lotus Elise.

Well, probably heard me prattling on about them actually but,

this is in a different league.

It doesn't feel like the steering wheel is connected to the tyres,

by anything so mundane as mechanics or engineering.

It's like driving using The Force.

"Use The Force, Jeremy. Use The Force."

And it absolutely will not under steer.

There's just tons and tons and tons of grip

and then when it does let go, it's the back

which just gently, calmly,

steps out of line.

You know I've driven some pretty good cars in my time.

Well to be perfectly honest, I've driven every car in my time.

But this, as far as handling is concerned,

purely as a driver's car,

I think it's my favourite. I really do.

Listen to that sound.

I don't know another car like this.

I just so love it.

"I shall go after Skywalker. Get me my Noble."

It's better than stuff costing ten times as much.

£40,000?

It's a bargain.

Now, you may have noticed in that film just there that the brake lights

were flicking on and off all the time.

That wasn't me left-foot braking. I don't know how to left-foot brake.

And if I tried, I'd crash. That was obviously a loose connection.

And there are other things wrong with it. Look at this for instance. To open

the front or the back, you need a screwdriver.

Then, we've got the window - that's Noble's idea of "down".

And you should see its turning circle.

Right, this is a, well the V-word, double V-word infact doing a U-turn. There we are.

That's how much space it needs.

Here's the Noble, full lock, and... oh, Lord.

That's not completely brilliant, is it?

You need Belgium to turn round in.

Jeremy, stop it. That's dirty. It's also not very nice to look at, actually.

Seriously, apart from the turning circle, which is disastrous, is it really that good?

Yes. Do we all like it?

- Yes. - Everyone? Anyone not like it?

- It's fantastic. - Fair enough. It's that good.

Well, every fast car that we test here is gonna go round our test track and set a lap time

so we can evaluate them all against one another

and it's all fair, so the Stig drives them.

The times go up there on our Power Car Laptime Board,

so let's see what the Stig did with it.

The problems of the British weather. Look at that track.

It's absolutely soaking wet but the Stig has no fear at all as he heads on down

to that nasty little jump just before the first corner, really unsettles a bad chassis

but it won't unsettle that, believe me.

In he goes. How fast was that? That was 100 mph, pretty much.

No, it wasn't. Yes, it was almost 100 mph through that first corner.

Down to 60. Coming up through here - this is gonna be tricky

as the back's gonna go very, very light.

Brake lights on. That doesn't means anything. Through there. Look, not even...

What is he listening to in there?

Anyone catch that? Sounds of silence.

Here we go down the main straight. 97, 100, 102, 105.

That was 105 mph.

Let's remember, the Ford Focus earlier was only doing 99 and that was on a dry track.

Right, through the Hammerhead, no need to worry about understeer there -

it doesn't do that even when it's raining.

And down the main straight, brake hard.

'Cause he's never gonna get through the follow through flat out, is he?

Is he? 94-No, he's lifted.

But that's 100 mph. That is seriously quick. That is so fast.

This is going to be a fast lap time, even on a wet track.

Now he's on to the main straight.

And what's his speed? 106. That was 106 mph!

And the braking time is three times the braking distance. Turn into Bacharach bend.

He's gonna have to brake again for Carpenters. Is he gonna get that tail out?

Is he gonna keep it nice and smooth?

Maximum power and across the line in...

1:32.9 on a wet track.

Do you think it's brave, The Stig, or just a bit stupid?

It's a racing driver, it doesn't understand fear.

I really wouldn't do that.

I'm gonna round that up, 'cause I'm gonna put it to 1:33 but I'm gonna put a "W"

because it was wet, and then we'll remember.

And do you know, the extraordinary thing is - wet, and this is a £40,000 car,

and the Zonda, that was a £310,000 car.

- It's not at all bad. - Quite an achievement.

- You know when the Zonda went round so quickly? 1:23? - Mm-hmm.

And we did say if you've got a car that you

reckon can do it quicker than that, contact us.

We were expecting some pretty exotic stuff.

We've had some e-mails; Actually, we've had thousands.

It makes us worry about our audience, some of these.

There's a guy here on this e-mail who says he'll easily do it

in his... Triumph Spitfire.

65bhp. He might as well try and do it in his tumble dryer!

Another guy here reckons he'll smash the time,

and that's quoted directly from the e-mail, "smash" the time in his 911 Turbo.

I've got three words for you. No. You. Won't.

Now, let's talk about rock stars.

Most of them today wouldn't know a good car if it offered

to pleasure them in the back of a limo.

All they want really is to get invited on Ant and Lard and be picked up in a sponsored Citroen. They're pathetic.

But, my guest tonight he's a proper rock star.

You gave him a car like this, he'd probably lose it

or drive it into his moat.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jamiroquai front man, Jay Kay.

All right, sir? Thank you.

- How are you? - I'm very well.

- Have a seat. - Thank you.

- Actually, you are quite a car fan, aren't you? - Just a bit.

Really serious, 'cause we were going through the office the other day,

And I was working on my perfect garage.

And it would have a Mercedes Pullman, Ferrari 550, uh, Lamborghini Miura.

- SV. Of course. - You've got any of those?

Yeah. All of them.

And what else?

Um, there's a 360 Spider, which is outside, a DB5,

um, a Concourse 2002 Turbo '74.

That one actually interests me. Why have you got a 2002?

I've always had 2002s.

I started off, my first car was a 1602, which is a little underpowered job.

Well, your very first ever car? My very ever first car, which I bought it off two old ladies.

With some letters with it, that said "We did 1,500 miles in it this year."

And I did 1,500 miles a week, y'know?

And uh, that was a '72. It had all the original stickers and everything. And uh,

Then I went up to Tis - Touring Injection Internationals.

Then I had a dog of a turbo. Some of them are real dogs. They only did about 1,572 of them.

And now I've got a Concourse ex-BMW Car Club winner.

Oh, a really good one. 'Cause you were a fan of like the three litre CSLs.

I used to have an original "Batmobile", yeah.

Oh really, a 3.2?

- I had a 3.2 CSL, yeah. - You see, how boring could we get on numbers?

- Yeah, yeah. - Where did it all come from, your love of cars?

My mum had a Triumph Herald 1360 convertible.

Best turning circle of any car.

- That's something in its favour. - Yeah.

It was... I just spent most- I spent all my life on the road.

And you know, when you're in the back...

I mean in those days, they didn't really, you know, not everything had a motorway.

And um, you know, I spent the whole time in the back of the car, and just looking at other cars.

I knew every car on the road, you know.

This is when you were a kid?

When I was tiny. I mean, I was about 4 or 5. I knew every car on the road.

Now I don't know things, they all look the same.

- Your mum was an entertainer, as well, wasn't she? - Yeah yeah, my mum was a singer

so she did a lot of miles all the time.

- Anyway, listen, we've got a little game. - Yes.

I haven't seen this, so, 'cause I'm gonna play it with you.

'Cause I was, I could say Maserati before I could say Mummy.

We're gonna put some pictures of bits of cars on the screen.

- You can all join in, okay? - Right. Oh, I like this game!

- I love these games! - We'll see if we can see what sort of car it is.

'Cause I'm such a sucker for this. I sit and watch old '70s movies like The Sweeney, going "Oh, look!"

- Ok then, here's one for you. What's that? - That's part of a Ferrari Enzo.

- It is. It's the rear wing on a Ferrari Enzo. - Are we right?

- Yes? - I thank you.

Yes, you can speak!

Ferrari Enzo. Yeah, alright, One-nil to you. Go on then.

Coming soon at a highway near you. I've got to have it.

Anything g-why?

- Why? - It's not a pretty car.

It's a stunning-looking thing.

You know why, I mean? Because there's gonna come a day they won't make cars like that anymore.

So let's not even go there. Let's bring up the next one. What is it?

- Zzz. - It's a Mini. The new Mini.

If that is... He's so good at this!

Thank you.

I told you I liked this game!

You didn't believe me, did you?

Do you know something really funny? Absolutely true.

We didn't tell you we were gonna do this.

- No. - It's not prepared.

I didn't know we were gonna do this. Come on. Let's have another one.

That could be lots of things.

- It's a Golf. - Oh, my word.

Actually, that's not a Golf.

- What is it? - Vectra.

- What? - Vectra.

If that's a Vectra... Oh! I said the word.

Oh! It's... I still don't know. It is! It's a Vectra!

- That is a phenomenon. - It's a phenomenon.

Ladies and gentlemen. I believe this car is a phenomenon.

- It's not really a phenomenon, is it? - It's rubbish.

It's not as bad as the other one, it's just rubbish.

Anyway, last one. I'm on nought. Which means we will be swapping jobs,

That is if we swap cars,

houses and have your Enzo.

- And have the Enzo. - And have your house with a moat.

Which you too can drive your G-Wagen into.

Have you driven your car- you have driven a car into a moat?

- I did, yeah. I got it all wrong. - Oh, this is fantastic! Well done!

I came round the corner in the G-Wagen and I said to the

two guys I was taking round the land, it was 80 acres, you know

and I started off really nicely and I said,

"You want a go?"He said, "No, it's alright, you know the land."

I mean, famous last words, "You know the land, it's alright, I'll let you do it."

I came round the corner at 60, G-Wagen, a big, old thumping great Wehrmacht G-500.

I looked. "Oh, 60. Oh, dear. Under steer. Oh. Oh. Oh."

- "Oh, bank, river!" - Splosh.

And the guy looked round at me and just went, "What you doing?"

And then I looked round again, and then the other one went in the back,

a big builder, he went, "We're sinking".

- And that was that, you know what I mean? - Let's have a look at this picture.

That's just a black hole!

- What's that? - What's that there?

I don't know. I'm trying to work this out, can we ju-

Is anyone here? This is Top Gear.

Have you all come to a gardening programme? What is it?

- What's that? - Anyone got an idea?

- What? - Lamborghini.

- Lamborghini what? - Murciélago.

Murciélago? I got to say that did cross my mind. It's something to do

with the vents that come up, isn't it?

What, the slidey things? Can you pull back? Let's have a look.

Stop. Ah, no, alright, yeah yeah yeah. Clear as day, there's that little...

- There you go. There it is - Murciélago. - Clear as day what?

Oh, God al...

- I tell you what, he did well though, with the little square. - I'm impressed by that.

- Great car. Driven one? - Don't show us up next time, yeah?

Well done, you Have you driven one?

No, I haven't yet.

'Cause you are a fairly wicked driver.

You know, because of the work, you know,

the type of job I do, which I want to get rid of and swap for this one now.

I'm gonna swap it for your job.

- Any time, I'll swap with you any time. - You wouldn't like it, I can assure you. But, you know...

-No. Your fans wouldn't like it. No, no, that's true. They wouldn't like it.

- What's that idiot doing on the stage? - Who's that croaking?

Um, no. You know,

I don't get as much track time as I'd like to, you know what I mean?

What's the fastest you've ever been then?

I don't like to say, cause everybody thinks I'm just some thug on the road, but

I did do Rome to Calais in 13 hours and hit 190, which was...

- interesting. - That's really good, actually.

Did the mental arithmetic there.

- Yeah. Rome to Calais in 13 hours. - That's really properly fast.

The needle didn't drop below 140, really.

- Even in the petrol stations? - Yeah, I needed petrol-

- I presume you visited a few. - I visited a few, yeah. Well it's a,

it's always that balance, isn't it? Do I go a bit slower and not visit so many?

Yes, that's it. No. Go faster.

And then you wonder why that bloke in the Morris Minor is ahead of you, still.

You know, because the other thing is that every petrol station you stop in Europe

you go, "Ooh I'll have that cuddly toy and

"there's an interesting interior light thing on a thing

"and I'll have one of those, even though I've got ten of them at home

"and something to stick on the window and all this rubbish."

Um, anyway, course, as you know, you haven't just come down here to chat and play silly kids' games.

No.

The reason we have a celebrity guest every week is so that they go out

and play "Star In A Reasonably-Priced Car".

They drive round our track in our Suzuki Liana. Now, you did that earlier today, yes?

I did.

Something quite funny, we had Harry Enfield here last week, he drove the car in standard tune.

Heard it was Jay Kay, we put a rollcage in it.

- We're gonna be seeing, later on... - Yes.

- How you did. - Okay.

Actually, have you driven the RS Focus?

I have. I was given one just last week, yes.

Did you like it?

I... can't say I did like it much.

- Really? - No. No.

What, you foun all that...

It was like, "Oh, oh, there he goes."

- "Oh, there he goes again!" It's, it's quite. - It's absolutely terrible.

It's nicely put together. Nice thing. Looks nice, I like the wheels.

The thing is though,

These RSes, we gotta get on and talk a bit more about RSes,

we were talking about them earlier.

Because what interests me, by putting those big engines in like normal family cars,

it was like when Marks and Spencer started selling pumpkin and ricotta soup. You could go in there and think:

"I can afford this exotic food. That's great! I can do it!"

That's what it was like with RSes.

If you think about it,

whenever a TV producer wants to sort of portray his detective as soft and gentle,

like Bergerac gets that old Triumph and Morse gets the Jag.

But then when he wants him to be a hard, gritty, you know, tough guy-

Professionals-type guy. Sticks them in an RS 2000.

You get The Professionals and you get Spender.

The thing about The Professionals is,

that I still maintain, even now, however many years down the line, it still has an effect

if you put someone in an RS Ford,

horns grow out of their... Look, I'll tell you what happened, okay?

All these RS people, they came down here, this morning. We said, "You can have a drive around the track if you like".

This is their idea of a drive round the track.

Look at this. Watch this. Is he going to drive through here quietly?

- Nope. Nope. No. - Nice amount of squeal.

It's quite funny how we never said "drive fast". We just wanna get some shots.

This is their idea of normal driving.

Look at that!

Um, excuse me, this is your Capri, isn't it?

- You're wanted on the phone, yeah, it's just over there. - Okay.

Thanks.

I've never driven one!

Are you going to... Jeremy, that's the man's car!

He's looking for the phone!

Of course, Jeremy, you didn't drive this, the RS200, did you?

No, I didn't, no.

Probably ust as well for it, really, 'cause they're quite rare.

You have driven one.

- I did in the summer actually yeah, for a video I was making, I did. - Yeah.

It didn't go so well, did it, Jeremy?

D'you like to have a look? I think we should. Let's have a look.

The RS200 was always a tricky car to drive.

It never really feels like you're in control.

Here comes the power.

That's awesome!

Don't...

You can't clap him! You can't clap him for that!

It was a secret thing. I've been humiliated by Jay Kay.

- Now you've humiliated me. - How long after setting off did you do that, Jeremy?

- Not long. - No it was the first corner, wasn't it?

- It was the first corner. - And you broke it.

I did break it.

Anyway, gotta move on now, okay? We're gonna humiliate some other people.

When we were putting this series together,

we were looking for new presenters...

God knows how we ended up with you actually,

but we were looking for a lot of new presenters.

People sent their tapes in, right?

Now this one is from a chap called Gaz, okay?

Let's show you what Gaz's tape looked like.

Hello and welcome to "Gaz on Motors".

Today, we're gonna be looking at instrumentation. Speedos in particular.

Oh, he's still going on!

...this one only has the odometer, whereas the Mini Cooper had both odometer and trip.

It actually has two spools, mounted in place, here and here.

Gaz was heroically dull, wasn't he?

So you see, you just got the job, but it was close.

But do you know someone who's more boring than that? Hmm? Because if you do, why don't you drop us a line?

We are looking for the biggest car bore in Britain.

And the address is, what shall we have?

- And this week's Insider Dealing's got a couple of real bargains for you. - What are they?

Ah well, last week's cheap Citroens. We've got another one for you.

Um, C5. Not a bad car. But it is up against a lot of really good ones.

- It is quite a bad car. - It's not that bad.

- It's not, it's great spec. - It's like treading in dog dirt,

it's not as bad as having your leg chopped off, but it's still pretty unpleasant.

Okay, well the base model, petrol base model, just isn't selling.

Uh, the car's about £14,500 new, retail. I was offered one this week, brand new, for ten grand.

- £10,000. - Yeah.

1.8, you've got air con, you've got CD, electric windows, power steering, trick suspension. 10 grand!

- Rover 75, not a bad car, probably the best Rover for a number of years. - Not much competition.

Not much competition. Two litre V6. Good engine, but they've just dropped it.

They replaced it with a 1.8 turbo, it's a little bit more efficient on fuel, lower emissions and so forth.

What it does mean is dealers for 2 litre V6s are out there doing a deal.

So if you want a cheap Rover 75 and you can find a 2 litre V6,

you're gonna get a bargain.

- How much of a bargain? - Talk to your dealer, there's no official figures.

- But they will do a deal, guaranteed. - Big deals! Ooh, nice.

Um, used car bargains. If anybody here fancies a super-mini,

now is the time to buy one.

Um, things like Citroen Saxos, Fiat Seicentos, all the kind of small stuff.

And there's a very good reason for it.

Because this is the time of year that the dealers change their courtesy cars,

their loan cars; The kind of thing you get when your car's in for a service.

And they tend to run super-minis, they're normally...

Why do they change them this time of year?

Well, it's a good reason for it, they build those cars in Europe.

Most of them are built in Europe.

And in July and August they shut the factory and re-tool to prepare for next year's models.

Um, this is the time of year the new models hit the UK...

- So, basically... - They bought them a year ago, now they're flogging them on.

They'll be base cars, three doors, non-metallics and that kind of thing,

but you can get a 12-month-old car for four grand.

- Four? That is cheap, actually. - That's seriously cheap.

Another used-car bargain at the moment, um, BMW 7 Series, you know what the new one's like, pretty ugly...

Um, new sales on that are not good.

But the impact of that is the new ones made the old one look really, really old.

Really old-fashioned.

So the prices are dropping big style.

- Really? - Really, really dropping, massively.

If you've got one, it's bad news, cause it's gonna be worth peanuts,

but if you want to go and buy one, it's great news.

Give you a little example, this is a car I was offered this week, 728i

with a bit of spec on it, 2001 on a Y, so that car's 18 months old.

The guy paid nearly 46 grand for it new, today he's selling that car,

without doing a deal, without even negotiating, he'll take 24 grand for it.

It's a half-price car!

Do we feel sorry for him?

No!

Rotten bit of luck.

And final thing, bit of a used car tip, really.

If you're a person who does low mileage the chances are, when you go to look for another used car

you're kind of fascinated, you want to buy another car with low mileage.

Uh, it's absolutely the wrong thing to do. If you do low mileage,

the thing to do is actually buy a car with massively high mileage.

Reason being that cars with over 60,000 miles at the moment are

being hit in the trade, big time, so they are so cheap it's untrue.

Give you an example; You can go out and buy a 97 P-plate Mercedes Estate car, C200, something like that,

with average mileage - 50,000 miles it costs you £9,500.

- Okay, not a bad car. - Yeah.

Or you could buy one with higher mileage, say 80,000 miles, and you

can get a 2000 model, a car three years newer, for the same money.

- Really? - Absolutely,

so if you're doing low mileage, you run it for a couple of years...

Cause these engines will last 150 probably even 200,000 miles.

Absolutely, this is the thing. So don't be afraid of the mileage, basically.

80 - 90,000-mile car, you're still gonna have 60,000 miles left on it.

So that means, in the last two minutes, you've saved everyone about £25,000.

- Hopefully, yeah. - Thanks very much for that. Now, Jay, good news.

You were once told that you could be a rally driver.

Now we're gonna find out, how good you are or bad, on a track.

- We've got the tape. - Okay.

You wanna see it?

- Might as well. - Run it!

Okay.

I like this third gear business, I like this third gear business.

Right, I must get this right. I must learn to drive properly.

And it's a slight turn in there, it's there.

That's better. That's better. That's better! That's better!

That's there all the way.

That's the one, ooh!

Don't be punished, don't be tempted to put too much power on,

that's beautiful! I'm going to get this down

even further, get it out of reach of Clarkson and his henchmen!

This is the one, this is the punisher! 76, 80, 80, 80, 82.

Bang it in there!

And flat we go!

- Flat in third. - In third? It's a fourth gear corner!

You'd never keep the revs up.

- No, but you'd keep the speed up. Flat through there. - Flat! Flat!

Okay, how fast did you get along here? This is a crucial bit.

- I don't know... - 87 I once hit there.

Have you driven anything as cheap as this in your life?

Listen. Before we say this is cheap okay, this is £10,000.

- £9,995. And you're across the line. - I crossed the line, oh.

In the £9,995 car and I, oh! What are you doing here?

- I don't know what happens. - Have you lost it?

Oh! Look at that! Ladies and gentlemen, a handbrake turn!

Beaten Jeremy! I've beaten Jeremy Clarkson on the tape!

These are the times so far, can we get the camera nice

and tight on Jay, because I've got your lap time, okay.

- Are we gonna get nice and tight? Jay Kay, Okay? - Yeah!

One minute...

48.1 seconds!

That's astonishing!

Get it up there!

Straighten it up!

Genuinely happy about that.

It's not that I'm a sore loser, or anything.

You're just gutted.

- You're smarting inside. I know. - I'm hurt.

So hurt that I'm going to humiliate you by showing everyone a little clip

of you doing some practice in the Suzuki.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jay Kay!

Right! Right, I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna say it.

I don't like all RSes, okay?

I'm sorry, I just don't. There were some I couldn't get on with. Let me explain.

The whole '80s RS thing, huge bonnet scoops and spoilers,

I don't know, it all kind of left me behind a bit, left me a bit cold. No. For me...

the RS legend wears sideburns and a rally jacket so I look back in lust at this,

the Ford RS 1800.

It was only made for two years and was killed off in 1977.

Of course, you might have missed that, '77 was quite a busy year.

I was six and I howled with desire every time I saw one.

I wanted one, no, I didn't just want one, I really, really needed one.

It had absolutely everything you could want,

alloy wheels, Recaro seats, tons of racing pedigree, even a wing on the back, wow!

If all that sounds a bit limp next to today's rather more spectacular stuff,

let me put it into context for you.

The RS 1800 is Ford's most successful rally car ever.

It's still used today in Clubman and international rallies and it still wins.

This had proper credibility, real pedigree, it didn't earn its stripes joyriding

and it didn't judge its success by the size of the insurance claims.

I always, always wanted to drive one and I'm going to drive this one.

Oh, boy!

This is every bit as delicious as I thought it would be.

It's a machine, it's proper machine, it's got moving parts and it's not ashamed of it.

It may only boast 115bhp now, sure you can get scooters with that much,

but underneath at the front, there's an 1800cc double overhead cam, 16 valve,

alloy-blocked Cosworth engine.

And in 1975, that was the equivalent of cruise missile technology.

This was clever, hi-tech stuff, really was!

Mind you, as soon as you go through anything like a chicane, you're

well aware of the fact that we've got old car springs at the back!

Body control really wasn't what it is today.

4.9 million Escorts were sold in the UK,

of which 109 were RS 1800s.

That tells you something about the rarity, there are 25 of them left running today.

Interestingly, two of the 109 made were red, of which one survives.

So if you're digging around in your shed, and you find a red one, look after it, it's worth a couple of quid.

See, mark my words, there is gonna be a huge market

for 1970s cars because people like us grew up with them.

Couldn't afford 'em then, couldn't drive 'em then!

Now, we can! And if we're lucky, we can afford to buy them.

Do you know, in an odd way it's getting to feel like an antique,

and I don't mean 'cause of the age.

I think it's to do with the controls.

They're somehow finer, more delicate to operate,

they haven't got that engineered-in chunkiness you get in modern car controls.

But don't let the antique thing fool you.

In its day that was a potent force.

That, if you ask me, is a proper RS.

See, I like RSes as well. Can I explain something about that?

I wasn't really going very fast.

No, you weren't. You were being a bit light in your loafers.

The guy who owned it was there,

and he's really big and scary, so I drove like Sister Wendy, I'm sorry.

Anyway, action, serious action now. Buses jumping over motorbikes.

There's no particularly good reason why we did this, I don't think you need one.

It's just a fun thing to do.

So here's what happens, finally, we've promised you this, when you

try and jump a bus over 14 motorbikes.

Ah! Why are you laughing? It's your licence fee!

That was almost too much fun! If anybody is interested,

do you want to know how many bikes it cleared?

- I do! How many did it clear? - It did actually clear three.

- Three bikes. Did anybody say that? - Who said three?

- You said three, Werther's Originals! - Well done.

Three.

- Destroyed 14 others. - Oh no I hate motorbikes, I do, I loathe them.

If I'd been driving the bus, I'd have backed up, reversed over.

"There we go that's got those three, as well!"

Um, and that, sadly, is all we've got time for this week.

Next week, I shall be driving the best looking car in the world ever.

Some small children will be deciding on their

favourite supercar for their bedroom walls

and um, oh, you remember last week we asked if there were

any grannies out there who thought they could do a doughnut.

Thousands replied, saying they'd like to try. So we let them.

That is going to be on next week. See you then!

Subtitles modified from MTOD transcript Ripped by GLUE of QxR Edited/corrected for TGCC v2 by AlexGRFan97