Top Gear/Segments: Difference between revisions

The presenters embark on a two-to-three-day drive to some significant destination in new cars they have chosen for themselves, in order to give a thorough evaluation of the power, speed, handling, quality, and ride comfort. On some occasions, they have also used these cars to go looking for the best driving roads in the world.<br /><br />There does not appear to be a budget, but the cars must fit into a general genre (e.g. lightened supercars, American muscle cars), subject to the willingness of the manufacturer to lend a car for the presenter to test. On two occasions, Clarkson (Ford GT) and Hammond (Dodge Challenger) have undertaken the trip in cars they personally own. Hammond ended up buying the Challenger when Dodge wouldn't lend him one for the trip, stating that ''Top Gear'' tended to treat their cars as rubbish. On a more recent occasion (during their "Best luxury car for an Albanian mafia road trip"), Clarkson stated that because Bentley abruptly changed their mind in supplying one of the cars, he had to find a "local" Bentley to drive. [[Non -Indicative Name|And it is a Bentley only in name]].<br /><br />Examples of road trips undertaken include:

Most weeks one of the presenters (usually Clarkson or Hammond) does a more-or-less conventional track test and review of the week's featured car. After that review, he turns the car over to the show's "tame racing driver", The Stig, for a Power Lap. The Stig takes the car as fast as he can around the ''Top Gear'' test track, and at the end of the segment the presenter reveals The Stig's lap time and posts it on a board.<br /><br />A standard feature of the Power Lap is the introduction of The Stig, which (starting with Series 6) [[Running Gag|follows a specific pattern]]. The presenter starts by saying that it's time to turn the featured car over to the show's tame racing driver, and then adds a humorous description of The Stig (sample; the description changes every week): "Some say that he thought ''[[Star Wars]]'' was a documentary, and that he recently pulled out of ''I'm A Celebrity'' because he is frightened of trees... and Australia... and Koo Stark... and [[Ant and Dec|Ant... and Dec]]. All we know is, he's called the Stig." These are frequently [[Ripped Fromfrom the Headlines]], and the most popular are scathing attacks on minor celebrities of the week ("And, long before anyone else, he realised [[Big Brother|Jade Goody]] was a racist pig-faced waste of blood and organs").<br /><br />In more recent episodes they've played a bit with the formula. Perhaps one of the best was Hammond's flub: "Some say that one of his legs gets longer when he sees a pretty lady, and that I haven't done one of these for some time and I've forgot to make up a second thing."<br /><br />The fastest ever Power Lap was done by a BAE Sea Harrier, in 31.2 seconds. It went a bit wide on some of the corners, but the pilot claimed that he could have kept it in bounds, and still set the lap record. The fastest Power Lap by an ''automobile'' was 58.2 seconds, by the 2004 Renault Formula 1 car. Given that the best of the world's supercars manage in the 1:18 range, that's stinking fast.<br /><br />However, neither of those times was recorded on the official ''Top Gear'' lap board, because to qualify for the board the car must be street legal -- able to go over a speed bump and using road-legal tires during the lap. The 1:10 time set by the Ferrari FXX {{spoiler|driven by Michael Schumacher}} in Season 13 was removed from the board on the next episode because the car was using racing slicks. The current fastest lap is the Ariel Atom 500 V8, with a time of 1:15.1 (which is more than a second and a half faster than second place, the Bugatti Veyron Supersport, at 1:16.8).

* South America Special (Bolivia and Chile - aired December 2009): The presenters bought off-road vehicles for less than £3,500 over the Internet and attempted to drive from the center of the Bolivian rainforest to the Pacific coast in Chile. On the way, they had to build a temporary bridge over a ditch, ford a river, negotiate the terrifying Yungas Road in Bolivia, and cross the Andes mountains. The special put all three presenters through the wringer, as their worst fears (heights, insects, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|manual labor]]) were present in abundance, making this their most harrowing episode since the Polar Special.<br /><br />They also almost ''died'' while trying to cross a volcanic pass. The air was so thin that their cars almost couldn't run (the fuel-air mixture was way off and couldn't actually combust), and they were suffering from acute oxygen deprivation. (Series 14, Episode 6)

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