Jeremy Clarkson explains our addcition to speed.
August 17, 2007 12:43 PM   Subscribe

The Century of Speed [Google Video] by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame. Usually he reviews cars, writes nasty columns or does something stupid with vehicles, but this documentary is not just about cars ... it's about the speed of our modern lifes and his wife.
posted by homodigitalis (17 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's about the speed of his wife?
posted by mrnutty at 1:22 PM on August 17, 2007


That second link about the Atom is freakin awesome. 0-60 in 2.9? At about $40,000, you can get twice the performance of a Ferrari Enzo...
posted by Debaser626 at 1:31 PM on August 17, 2007


Jezza married his doppelganger? Weird.
posted by Keith Talent at 1:42 PM on August 17, 2007


Sorry, I know I'm supposed to like him and all (since I'm transplanted), but I think he's a hypocrite. After a career of railing against America & Americans, he's now moving his top rated show to the US.

One word: sellout.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:57 PM on August 17, 2007


I thought he refused to live in the US, so the deal for that was scrapped.
posted by Lord_Pall at 2:21 PM on August 17, 2007


The century of speed oil.
posted by stbalbach at 2:21 PM on August 17, 2007


The Sun reports: American version of Top Gear has hit the skids – because Jeremy Clarkson has refused to live in the US. ... Top Gear managing director, Adam Waddell, said: “We don't comment on specific negotiations. Suffice to say, BBC Worldwide still has aspirations to take Top Gear to the US"

Don't know why they'd feel the need to make a specifically American version. Would the audience really see such a big difference in setting fire to a trailer in Vermont instead of setting fire to a caravan in Dorset?

I think this video demonstrates nicely that amusing as he sometimes is, Top Gear wouldn't be nearly as good if it were just Jeremy Clarkson's show.
posted by sfenders at 2:43 PM on August 17, 2007


I heard the same thing Lord_Pall, which actually made me really happy. I don't think I could stomach the changes that they would have had to make to Top Gear to make it work in America.

One word: sellout


I've been watching Clarkson for a couple of years now, and I think it's safe to say that he has enough of a sense of humor about himself that he would willingly embrace the fact that he is a sellout.

I mean, a season or two ago he made a point of shilling for every single Ford they reviewed on the chance that it might get him closer to buying one of the new GT40s. He reveled in the fact that he was doing it even though he was mocked mercilessly by Hammond and May.
posted by quin at 2:53 PM on August 17, 2007


Good point, quin. At least his persona is more immediately recognisable as artificial and contrived for telly than, say, Gordon Ramsay's is.

If he really did refuse to live in the US, then my estimation of him just rose several points.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:02 PM on August 17, 2007


A bit of searching gives me two different articles.

This one says that he refused to go because it meant he would be away from his family and friends for four months out of the year.

This (newer) one suggests that his bosses told him to suck it up. So there will most likely be an American Top Gear (ugh) and Clarkson is doing it under protest.
posted by quin at 3:56 PM on August 17, 2007


More underwhelmed on viewing than I'd hoped.
posted by kaspen at 4:46 PM on August 17, 2007


Didn't they already try Top Gear in the US? I remember watching the two or three episodes a year and a half ago. They basically took their filmed segments as is, and recorded new live-audience intros (but still with a UK audience), and restarted the lap board, as I guess they figured having a bunch of times already up there didn't make sense?

It was pretty much the worst thing I had ever seen. Just awful. I thought the latest was that Top Gear is coming to BBC America, without any format changes? Or am I making that up?

Top gear has gotten less and less awesome though. Maybe in preparation for the US market...
posted by danny the boy at 6:03 PM on August 17, 2007


Oh and in the, I'm-an-American-who-likes-motorsport-but-has-no-one-to-talk-to-about-it-round-the-water-cooler, vein: where can I get my questions answered about WRC. Specifically, what's the real story behind the problems plaguing Petter and Subaru?
posted by danny the boy at 6:16 PM on August 17, 2007


I've seen some Top Gear episodes in the US, run on either the Speed Network or Discovery, and they really butchered it. I think they cut stuff out -- seemingly at random -- in order to insert more commercials, and they always ran the shows out of order.

I have little faith that they'll do any better if they made a 'real' US version, and a strong suspicion that they'd make it a lot worse.

I'll stick to watching the actual BBC versions on Bittorrent.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:00 PM on August 17, 2007


Metafilter: my epiglottis is full of bees.
posted by Tacodog at 3:02 AM on August 18, 2007


Rather sadly, the Lightning on the lawn was merely borrowed, and got sent back after filming to Wycombe Air Park from which it hailed. It's for sale now, though, for £20k.

So JC could buy it, instead of only pretending to buy it. Of course, it's only television. And they never said otherwise. So why do we think that "hey, perhaps he really did that"?

Like Top Gear, this programme presents fiction, slyly, as fact, alongside messages like "driving is more democratic than voting", and that's more interesting than J Clarkson getting his blocks off playing 3D video games.

(Old Lightning joke: "You will see," said the engineering officer, "that the top engine is slightly offset from the bottom engine. This is to give the pilot somewhere to sit.")
posted by Devonian at 6:51 AM on August 19, 2007


Clarkson's documentaries about the Victoria Cross and WWII's Operation Chariot were a couple of the best war documentaries I've seen. I wished he did more of those than Top Gear.
posted by quartzcity at 11:36 AM on August 20, 2007


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