Top Gear Season 21 thread

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xanis

Lifer
Sep 11, 2005
17,571
8
0
Finally, an episode that feels like the "Real" Top Gear. I felt like the first few episodes this series were very, very "meh", but Ep. 4 was on-par. :thumbsup:
 

_Rick_

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2012
3,943
69
91
Also, DAT DISCO VOLANTE

QFT.

These things will be the Bugatti Atalante of the future.
Ultra rare, well made, and a strinkingly beautiful representative of 60 years of automotive design.

I think what really mades it stand out is the boldness of the lones ans the non-conformity to currently accepted design language, as well as these deliciously complex shapes that handbuilding allows.

I wonder what you'd have to do to get one, besides.cough up the money. Compared to the AMG 6x6, that thing will stand out quite a bit more in Dubai

And that 6x6 is just awesome as well. I wish they'd offer a SUV version of it, with some massaging seats in the back, so you can lie back and relax, while going down 60° slopes, with the chauffeur behind the wheel and a few Toyotas with machine guns mounted on the back chasing you.
 
Mar 11, 2004
23,444
5,845
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Really? I thought it might be the worst episode of the season (which is saying something as I think this whole season has been not very good). Something about it felt really off, like they were really padding for time which is why they had the awful pizza thing during the news segment and the GT-R/tablecloth bit. Plus the SIARPC seemed longer than normal.

The individual segments themselves felt pretty meh. Hammond's was mostly good but felt cut short or compressed somehow.

Jeremy's segment was kinda stupid I thought, mostly because the whole thing hedged around the coachbuilding when I'm pretty sure that car was just a concept car Alfa commissioned as an homage to the original (which looks like an Alfa version of an E Type and was made almost 10 years before the E Type, seems really odd they didn't even mention the original) and I'm guessing they just sold it (I believe several carmakers have been selling some unique/concept cars as the cost for upkeep is high and they can often fetch a good price). So its not like it really represents any real change in coachbuilding (there's a ton of coachbuilt concept cars, Italdesign Guigario, Zagato, Pininfarina, and can't even remember most of the other ones). Alfa actually has a bunch of these one-off concepts over the past decade (one is even based on the previous Viper).

I just feel like his whole bit about coachbuilders was just way off. He didn't even do his usual "OMG Italians teh sexy!" type of thing (since most of the decent coachbuilders are Italian). Some of them went bankrupt due to the financial stuff, but its not like the expertise went away, in fact Fiat bought some of the Italian (or maybe not just Italian) ones. Plus the 8C that this car was based off of was more or less the same thing (a concept car that enough rich people asked about that Alfa basically had coachbuilders do most of the work on and then had Maserati assemble it) I believe so its not like coachbuilt cars were a lost art or actually went away at all like he tried to insinuate happened with the rise of unibody/monocoque, just had a hiccup when the economies went sour. Also odd that he didn't mention Ferrari/Pininfarina as they have a pretty well known custom option (which I find it kinda funny how they spun that like it was some new thing when Pininfarina had been doing that for some time, for instance the Sultan of Brunei had sedan and wagon versions of the Ferrari 456 commissioned for him in the late 90s). Plus McLaren has said they'd be willing to (there was one based on the MP4-12C made although it wasn't very good looking).

The car...is a mixed bag to me. The looks are good although that hunchback is rather unsightly even though its there to be true to the original I guess although I think they kinda missed on that. The rest is good though and the name definitely fits, it looks like a spaceship. But the 8C was not a good car to be based on (and I actually think it easily looks as good maybe better than this).

Seems I was wrong and this was a concept car done by Touring a while back but now they've gotten Alfa's approval to make real ones, provided you're willing to give them your 8C for them to turn into this:
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/09/16/alfa-romeo-touring-disco-volante-poll/
 
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_Rick_

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2012
3,943
69
91
The only actual "series" coachbuilt car were the Aston Zagatos - I think they built around a dozen of those. A reference to those would have been nice, but then the work done one those pales compared to what the Disco Volante is.
 

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
29,767
33
81
The Porsche 918 is insane! Love it. Easy preferred over the P1.

Otherwise last night's EP was meh. This season has been a drag. Too many hot hatches!!!
 

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
7,460
3
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The P1 is yawn inducing, at least as a road car. You'd need a track near you to enjoy it, but if you had that and the money to buy a P1, you'd buy real race cars that are even better. *shrug* But hey, it's for sheiks, not geeks. Most will never go over 100mph or see 1000 miles. Anyway, I think the best new "hypercar" is yet to come, the LaFerrari, because it's going to be the most batshit insane and that's what these cars should be about.
 

_Rick_

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2012
3,943
69
91
Actually, now that I thought about it a little bit, the thing with the P1 is that they didn't go far enough, and give it an electric turbo, like the F1 units and the Le Mans prototypes have.
That would have been a proper technological game changer, but like this it just looks like a -properly fast- race car for the street, with a little bit of electrical help, where the 918 is just a more relevant package. Of course, these cars are also two slightly different exercises in marketing, with McLaren selling race cars for the road, and Porsche offering machines that are to be understood primarily as vehicles, but with little to no compromise, when it comes to having a car that is responsive and entertaining.

I would expect a P1 to be slightly faster around a dry track, with a competent driver behind the wheel. In any other condition the 918 is probably much more manageable.

Also WTF was that spinning out bit in the BMW all about? Clarkson drove a P1 at a wet Spa, and gets taken out by a spot of aquaplaning on his "home track"?

...also I feel the GTI was a bit miscast - there should have been an S3 or Golf R in its place, especially when starting the entire piece with the AMG45.

Overall this episode wasn't too bad though. The bit on the 918 felt a bit rushed, but then I suppose the manufacturers were probably quite heavy handed in what people were allowed to do with those cars.
It was a bit funny to see the 918 at Dubai, just after Chris Harris had the P1 there as well... Apparently the track has some good connections to the industry
 

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
whats that back story with Clarkson and CNN? He seemed to take extra pleasure in his CNN joke while introducing the Stig.
 
Feb 10, 2000
30,029
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I felt the Burma special was decent but probably should have been pared down to a single hour.

I thought they were going to end the season by showing us the P1 and 918 laps? During the second half of the special I was really really looking forward to that the entire time, then it just ended.
 
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