American Top Gear

The new American version of Top Gear premiered about a week ago, has anyone else seen it? I just finished watching the first episode on the History Channel's website. It seems like a rocky start to me, like they haven't quite figured out how to make the show uniquely American yet. It does show promise, but it's just...lacking something.

Most of the show was pretty mediocre, it didn't really get good until the last segment where the hosts tested three Lamborghinis. That was when you could finally see the chemistry between Ferrara, Foust, and Wood that supposedly landed them the jobs. It was also when they loosened up and stopped being so serious.

The "Big Star, Small Car" segment was, by far, the weakest part of the show. Ferrara doesn't seem to know how to conduct an interview, but maybe he'll grow into it as he gets more experience. Part of the problem was the star they'd picked for the first episode. Buzz Aldrin has done some incredible things, but once you get past his part in the Apollo program, there's not much to talk about. At least, not unless you're willing to go into his personal life and his problems with depression and alcoholism or get his reaction to the moon landing hoax conspiracy theories, which Ferrara didn't do. Instead there were some softball questions about how fast Aldrin was going when he went up in space and what kinds of cars he owned. Maybe Ferrara had too much respect for Aldrin and didn't want to say anything that would piss him off or maybe there was a good chunk of stuff that got left on the editing room floor, but this segment was really lacking.

I think the two biggest problems American Top Gear will have are the time constraints and the issue of commercial sponsorship. This episode clocked in at just over 44 minutes, and that's hardly surprising considering the way American television is formatted. The original Top Gear is closer to a full hour, and they can get in a lot of good stuff in the extra fifteen minutes that USTG loses (though, ironically, UKTG also suffers the loss of fifteen minutes when it's brought over to BBC America). As for the commercial sponsorship issue, I think it's going to be a big hindrance for the hosts. Their reviews of the cars weren't as critical as the Brits', and I think there's going to be more political correctness to avoid pissing off the sponsors. We've already seen that American car companies don't like how critical Top Gear is of them (notably when Hammond had to buy the Challenger SRT8 for the muscle car special because Chrysler wouldn't lend him one). UKTG can get away with it because they're not funded by commercials, but USTG doesn't have that luxury.

One thing BBC America has been starting to do is air the full length programs when they premiere so UKTG has been showing more episodes that take up 1 hour and 20 minutes.

In terms of the American Top Gear, a rocky start indeed. I will still give it some time but I much prefer the original.

American top gear was just a bleak clone. The presenters weren't anywhere near as original and funny as Clarkson, hamster and captain slow are.


I don't really see it surviving past the first season.

I caught bits of it last week, between commercials of whatever I was watching. Superficially it has the same look, aircraft hanger, audience standing, a Stig, guests driving the course (look it's Buzz Aldrin) but I didn't watch enough of it to get a feel of the interaction of the hosts. That's where the BBC version excels. There is a genuine chemistry there and that's going to be the toughest thing to achieve.

The chemistry is there, but you didn't really see it until the around the last ten minutes of the episode.

I think this is an obvious case of a cloned show just trying to hit american audiences in the right way.

It was rocky, but i think it also had some fun to it. I think the helicopter case in the first episode was kinda fun. I mean who seriously would not want a kick *** car and to have an entire town to themselves to get chased through.

In the second episode, that aired tonight, they did a race down a hill between a subaru and two skiers. Again was quite fun to watch.

As far as sponsorships i guess we will see. But figuring that in the first episode the reviews were about lamborginis and the second was about austin martins, i dont see them at the moment reviewing cars that are really going to rely on a 30 second ad to sell them anyway.

Well i guess were going to see how it goes. I will say right now im not overly impressed with the chemestry between the hosts. Its like they picked up a funny guy, a country funny guy and a car driver that really have nothing in common. And alot of the commontary at this point seems to be on the level of "OMG that was a kick *** ride." rather then real point by point reviews of the cars.

I found the first episode to be so painfully bad that I couldn't make it through it. The hosts had had no chemistry and could not even deliver their lines in a way that made them sound like they had any interest in being there. The first few minutes of the episode about what was coming in the season looked like a list of ripped off moments from the BBC version.

I have better things to do with my time than watch crap.