How Tech Works (2012–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Episode #1.2 - full transcript
On this
episode of How Tech Works,
we travel to a historic
racetrack in Germany
and meet a blogger
who writes about
some of the fastest cars around.
And we take a flight
on this new military
plane from Spain.
Sure, it looks like a
flying passenger van
but it's made for heavier work.
Hi there, and welcome
to How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer
and we've got a
bunch of incredible stories
from around the world of tech
this week.
We'll take an exclusive look
at a concept car that is
sure to grow on you, literally.
Plus, we'll meet a group
of guys taking part
in an extreme soapbox derby
called "The Rickety
Downhill Challenge."
But first, we kick off
with a story about
a blogger from Yorkshire
who loves fast cars. In fact
he's obsessed with
recording the fastest lap times
at the Nurburgring
the famous racetrack in Germany.
His ultimate goal is to beat
his own time. The question is
will he do it?
Nurburg, Germany.
Lots of very fast cars here.
Because drivers come
to test themselves
and their wheels
on the dangerous and legendary
Nurburgring.
The Nurburgring
is a 21 kilometer
long public round
that's also used as a racetrack.
I first came here in 2001
did one lap of the place and
decided I needed to perfect it.
And fast-forward
ten years and I'm still here.
It really gets under your skin,
it's really crazy.
It's where drivers
post lap times.
Bridge to Gantry is how
we time a lap on a public day.
We time it from the bridge
at the very start of the lap
to the gantry just before
the end of the lap.
But
Dale also reviews cars...
I look at one
very specific thing.
I say, how well does this car go
from the bridge to the gantry.
Today, he's testing
something brand new from the UK.
This is a Caterham
R300 Superlight.
It's called the Superlight
because it really is super light
it's less than 500 kilos.
It's got the bare
minimum required
to strap a human being into it
and put him round the track.
Every single panel is
like, wafer-thin
plastic or alloy.
The engine is a two liter
Ford four-cylinder
normally you'd see
it in a Ford Focus
it'd be making anywhere
between 120 - 150 horsepower.
Today the engine's making
closer to 200 horsepower.
I love the look of it.
I know it looks like it's
come straight out
of a 50s time warp.
Time to put
the Caterham to the test.
And maybe set a new
personal best lap time.
It's a short drive
to the Nurburgring.
Very busy day today.
Sundays are always busy.
I think half of the
experience is queuing
through the car park
out onto the track.
Well, at least
one good thing's happening
The Caterham's
turning some heads.
Public days are
called touristenfahrten
and the direct translation
of that is tourist driving.
It's about Mom and Dad
taking the family car
around the famous Nurburgring
kids in the backseat,
noses up against windows
However
the easy accessibility of
the most amazing racetrack
in the world means
you've also got the car park
half-full of guys with
tire pressure gauges
fire-proof suits
taking out their
road-legal sports car and
getting the maximum from it.
For one lap,
the cost is twenty pounds.
Use my season
ticket, go through.
Cost?
Eleven hundred pounds!
And, we are out.
We're heading towards the bridge
the bridge is the Antoniusbruche
which is the bridge that
we start the lap times from.
So fast traffic
moves to the left
slow traffic stays to the right.
The car's accelerating
fantastically.
Very short gear ratios.
I'll cog it down.
I will overtake this Clio.
We're heading
down into the Bogen.
Can't balance
the gas through here.
Beautiful.
Each turn of the
Nurburgring has a name.
Through the
Hatzenbach complex.
Dale
knows them all by heart.
He estimates he's
been around the Ring
about five thousand times.
Today, he's ruling the Ring...
overtaking everyone.
We're accelerating.
And I do believe
we've hit maximum speed.
We're very close
to the rev limiter.
There's the
rev limiter in top gear.
Well, there you go,
just been overtaken.
The top speed of
a CBR1000 is definitely
a little bit higher
than this car.
Ho-ho! Beautiful.
Carving through
the Sunday traffic.
Through the Foxhole.
Up the inside.
No one else is
going to overtake Dale today.
His personal best lap time
for the 13 mile track
is seven and a half minutes.
Less than eight is
considered very good.
He's got acceleration like
we can only dream of.
But
remember, speed kills.
You can't have a small
accident in the Nurburgring.
You can't forget for a second
that anything could
happen at any point.
You could come around the corner
and find an accident.
You could come around the corner
and find, as I did one time
a gentleman on a bicycle
with some recycling bottles
and he thought he was
on the, he thought he was
on a footpath or something.
Big accident up ahead.
I'm going to slow right down.
Oil spill.
The slow-down
means Dale is not going to set
any personal records today...
so he focuses on fun.
Very high-speed
corners, just turn the car in.
Really nice feeling in the apex
you can really feel
the limits of the tires.
We're a fast-forward car
in a slow-motion world.
Big g-force through
the Karussell.
The Caterham performed
absolutely excellently
it's so light, it's
incredibly nimble, it's
so agile, it just turns
left to right without
even thinking about it.
A very technical corner
now, the Caterham
really
really enjoys
corners like these.
We're just balancing the car,
not quite full gas.
Now with full gas!
Past the gantry.
eight minutes seven seconds.
Not my fastest lap, I'm
sure but certainly a lot of fun.
He gives the
Caterham a rave review...
same as he does the Nurburgring.
If you have even
the smallest amount
of petrol in your veins,
you really need to do a lap
on the Nurburgring,
just to say you've done it.
Now we're going
from incredible cars
to awesome airplanes. You see
this new military plane
from Spain can transform
from a hospital
to a cargo vessel
back to a passenger plane
in less time than it
takes to book a flight
Have a look.
It
may not look like it
but the people
on this assembly line
are building massive
passenger vans.
These babies boast
more than 5,000 horsepower
and travel at 300 miles an hour.
They can fly.
Really fly.
Okay, these are no
ordinary passenger vans.
You're looking at
the C295 airplane.
And, just like passenger vans
their insides can change.
You can expand cargo space,
or shrink it down...
But they're not for
running the kids around.
They're for military and
humanitarian missions.
The C295 is one
of the planes they build
at Airbus Military
in Seville, Spain.
It's got some
pretty cool features
like 360-degree radar
designed to detect airplanes
up to 250 miles away.
And an infrared system
that can cut through the dark
to reveal objects at night,
not to mention bad weather.
But the most interesting thing
is what can happen in the back.
In its stripped-down version,
the C295 is a transport aircraft
that can fly up to
11 hours non-stop
carrying cargo and personnel.
But, in just
one hour on the ground
it can transform into
a surveillance aircraft
thanks to customized
pallets, or modules
that slide on, and off.
For example, this is the
maritime patrol set-up.
In keeping with
the components theme
each C295 starts
as a mix of parts
flown in from different areas
of Spain, Chile,
Turkey and Indonesia.
The components are then
assembled here, in Seville.
There are more
than 80 of these planes
flying in ten countries
around the world
places like Afghanistan,
Iraq and Kosovo.
There are orders for more.
According to
the customer demand
we need to build
an aircraft every 11 days.
To make
sure there's no downtime
each workstation features
a computer readout
of status of each plane,
and work to be done.
They're making sure
everything's in its place
and that there's
a place for everything
on board this
passenger van of the skies.
Coming up, on "How Tech Works"
we'll catch up with the
tech wizards at Mercedes Benz.
And see what's in store
for the road ahead.
Get ready to roll,
into the very near future.
And we'll take part in
what can only be described
as an extreme go-kart race.
Welcome back to "How Tech Works"
I'm Dr. Basil Singer.
Now when it comes to car design
manufacturers usually
have to work within
certain restrictions, like
for instance, what
materials do you use?
What mechanical
principles can you employ?
And what budget do
you have to work with?
Well, just imagine
what you could accomplish
if there were no restrictions?
That's the fun challenge
facing the design team
at Mercedes Benz in California
limited only by
their imaginations.
This is
the Mercedes Biome.
It's light-weight,
Eco-friendly and biodegradable.
This technological marvel
is the car of the future
if its lead designer
has his way.
It's his talent that drives many
of the company's
image-defining models.
My name is Hubert Lee, I am 37
and I am the
Creative Director of
Mercedes Benz
Advanced Design California.
Design
is usually top secret
but today, we get
an exclusive look
at the Mercedes
Biome's development.
So I want to
take you to the back room
where normally a lot of
people don't really get to see.
can we stop? Yeah.
Okay, now you can come in.
The Biome
and all of our cars
that we work on
they all get put together here.
The Biome is
a first for Lee's design team.
There
were no boundaries
there were no limitations.
We could do whatever
we wanted to do.
With that
kind of creative license
they embrace what might be
technologically possible
down the road.
I wanted our
designers to not be restricted.
Just go all out, just be crazy
and just come up
with a concept we think
could be possible some day.
They
begin by imagining
the seemingly impossible.
What if the car
was grown from nature.
What if the car
was part of nature.
And what if the car
at the end of its life cycle
would get composted.
Then
commit to the idea
that in the future, seeds
will be coded with car DNA.
Mercedes Benz has
the star that is our identity
so we thought having
the star as a seed
would be cool.
So the front star
would actually morph
and grow into what
we call the interior.
The rear star would
grow into the exterior.
Imagining they control
every aspect of the vehicle
from weight to durability
they move through
their usual process.
So this is our designer area.
This is where the initial
creative process happens.
With
one notable exception.
We created
the environment first
before we actually
designed the car.
When we decided on the story
of actually growing the car
we decided that
rather than having
a really industrial
factory, that we
would go with more of a
a greenhouse type of inspiration
and so very sunlit, very
open, and actually growing
the individual cars underwater.
With the
world of the vehicle locked
focus returns
to shaping its look.
It had to look organic
but aesthetically pleasing
basically beautiful.
So before people even
get to know the concept
they are instantly drawn
to the car because it's just
beautiful, it's a work of art.
Movie software
refines these early sketches
by turning them
into digital models.
Next step is...
I think we should try
to integrate the wheel
to the body a little bit more.
Then,
the Biome goes 3D.
From the
digital data we would mill out
a scale model in clay
where we'll do our
surface refinements
and fine-tuning.
And if we need
if we think we need more detail
work on it, this is
where it happens.
The concept car's
interior is just as detailed.
It's got a
diamond seating configuration
so the driver
will actually sit
in the center far forward.
The side passengers
will sit in the sides
The rear passenger
will be sitting in the back
facing rearward.
The power-train
the suspension
the lights
everything will be combined into
these hub motors.
When
it's all put together
the Biome looks pretty cool
and promises a smooth ride.
I imagine
the ride experience
to be very smooth,
like flowing through air.
But how serious is
Mercedes Benz about production?
We didn't actually give
give it a set date or a time.
We just wanted to
throw it out there.
Maybe some day this is possible.
Earlier in the show
we checked out
the incredible road warriors
on the famous
Nurburgring in Germany.
And now, as they say
for something
completely different.
These road warriors
are just as competitive
as their German counterparts.
But, and there's always a but
for these chaps from Yorkshire
the biggest challenge may
just be the cars themselves.
Over
30 miles per hour.
Two kilometers downhill.
These go-karts
are about to push the
limits of gravity power.
At stake
the prestigious Rickety
Downhill Challenge Trophy.
If you think this looks dodgy
well, you should
check out the carts.
This is the leftovers
from my extension at home.
This used to be a bed.
I more or less just,
laid down on a bit of ply and
traced around myself.
One day
before the big race
we're on the ground.
This is the workshop,
of Colin Furze.
One of us was bored, thought,
you know, wouldn't it be fun
if we all built go-karts
and race them.
And and he was right.
It would be fun, so here we go.
Let's see what happens.
Course
designer and contender
today, Colin's
giving a sneak peek
at the making of
his own street racer.
To win the trophy, he's
pulling out all the stops.
Well, maybe not all of them.
As far as design and
technology is concerned
it's lacking in that.
So the R & D department's
not done, not put a lot
of effort into this one.
The main
components of Colin's machine
are rubbish.
Where you see wood pallets
he sees a chassis.
Yes!
Where
you see a mountain bike
Colin sees pre-built steering.
His rear tires were
taken from a kid's bike
one of the
neighbors' kids, that is.
He'll get them back one day.
As for brake cable,
well, that cost a pound.
The only pound spent.
Grandma's pillow!
As the
finishing touches are added
Colin's getting excited.
Excellent!
This is my interpretation of,
of my Downhill Challenger,
I suppose.
It's basically got
everything I want it to.
It steers, it brakes.
And it looks rubbish.
It's perfect
for tomorrow's race
but is it a winner?
First time going up against
everyone else's carts.
We'll find out if
I've built something
that's worth building
or if it's just going to be
a pile of wood.
On an
abandoned stretch of road
at the outskirts of town,
race day has arrived.
Colin gets his first look
at the competition.
It's basically an old bike
with an extra wheel on the back
because I was told it
needed to have three wheels.
So I've got a wood-cutting
disc on this side
for the go-karts
that's made from wood
and I've got a metal-cutting
disc on this side
for the ones made of metal.
Today
I think the boys in the garage
have been working well and
it should be perfected.
As the competitors
step up to the starting line
Colin has one last
trick up his sleeve.
So we thought, you know,
just to spice it up a little bit
we'd add a couple of
things in which are
completely non-related
to your kart-building.
So at the start of
the race you have to
down a can of fizzy drink.
Also at the end of
the course we have
a selection of saws
and pieces of wood.
So the person
that gets there first
will get a thick piece of wood
to cut with a very small saw.
But they don't know it yet.
So when they're
helling down the course
they don't know
that the faster they go
maybe the worse
situation it's gonna be
putting them in.
Three! Two! One! Go!
And as the
first soft drink can drops
it's time to ride.
One by one the racers
hit the pavement
but Colin is already struggling.
Finally, he's off too,
in last place.
Now gravity, and
the cart design take over.
The drinking has spread out
the entire field.
As the leaders try
desperately to stay in front
the fast carts are
making up lost ground.
At the bottom it's
Pappy Boy arriving first
with Simo in behind.
And that speck on
the horizon, that's Colin!
He's moved into 3rd!
All that's left now
is the sawing.
And today...
Yes!
A bigger saw beats
a fast cart, hands down.
And this year's Rickety Cup
Downhill Challenge Trophy
goes to
Colin Furze!
Well, I suppose my idea
of the wood sawing
is, kind of what
gave it to me, really.
Because I think I got there
just in time to get the right
saw and the right bit of wood.
But there we are.
It worked a treat.
Just goes to show? The
fastest cart don't always win.
Have you ever
heard of the phrase
don't quit your day job?
Well, maybe those lads
will find a way
to make a career out of
the Rickety Downhill Challenge
but, that's all the time
we've got today.
Thanks very much for watching.
Until next time,
I'm Basil Singer.
episode of How Tech Works,
we travel to a historic
racetrack in Germany
and meet a blogger
who writes about
some of the fastest cars around.
And we take a flight
on this new military
plane from Spain.
Sure, it looks like a
flying passenger van
but it's made for heavier work.
Hi there, and welcome
to How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer
and we've got a
bunch of incredible stories
from around the world of tech
this week.
We'll take an exclusive look
at a concept car that is
sure to grow on you, literally.
Plus, we'll meet a group
of guys taking part
in an extreme soapbox derby
called "The Rickety
Downhill Challenge."
But first, we kick off
with a story about
a blogger from Yorkshire
who loves fast cars. In fact
he's obsessed with
recording the fastest lap times
at the Nurburgring
the famous racetrack in Germany.
His ultimate goal is to beat
his own time. The question is
will he do it?
Nurburg, Germany.
Lots of very fast cars here.
Because drivers come
to test themselves
and their wheels
on the dangerous and legendary
Nurburgring.
The Nurburgring
is a 21 kilometer
long public round
that's also used as a racetrack.
I first came here in 2001
did one lap of the place and
decided I needed to perfect it.
And fast-forward
ten years and I'm still here.
It really gets under your skin,
it's really crazy.
It's where drivers
post lap times.
Bridge to Gantry is how
we time a lap on a public day.
We time it from the bridge
at the very start of the lap
to the gantry just before
the end of the lap.
But
Dale also reviews cars...
I look at one
very specific thing.
I say, how well does this car go
from the bridge to the gantry.
Today, he's testing
something brand new from the UK.
This is a Caterham
R300 Superlight.
It's called the Superlight
because it really is super light
it's less than 500 kilos.
It's got the bare
minimum required
to strap a human being into it
and put him round the track.
Every single panel is
like, wafer-thin
plastic or alloy.
The engine is a two liter
Ford four-cylinder
normally you'd see
it in a Ford Focus
it'd be making anywhere
between 120 - 150 horsepower.
Today the engine's making
closer to 200 horsepower.
I love the look of it.
I know it looks like it's
come straight out
of a 50s time warp.
Time to put
the Caterham to the test.
And maybe set a new
personal best lap time.
It's a short drive
to the Nurburgring.
Very busy day today.
Sundays are always busy.
I think half of the
experience is queuing
through the car park
out onto the track.
Well, at least
one good thing's happening
The Caterham's
turning some heads.
Public days are
called touristenfahrten
and the direct translation
of that is tourist driving.
It's about Mom and Dad
taking the family car
around the famous Nurburgring
kids in the backseat,
noses up against windows
However
the easy accessibility of
the most amazing racetrack
in the world means
you've also got the car park
half-full of guys with
tire pressure gauges
fire-proof suits
taking out their
road-legal sports car and
getting the maximum from it.
For one lap,
the cost is twenty pounds.
Use my season
ticket, go through.
Cost?
Eleven hundred pounds!
And, we are out.
We're heading towards the bridge
the bridge is the Antoniusbruche
which is the bridge that
we start the lap times from.
So fast traffic
moves to the left
slow traffic stays to the right.
The car's accelerating
fantastically.
Very short gear ratios.
I'll cog it down.
I will overtake this Clio.
We're heading
down into the Bogen.
Can't balance
the gas through here.
Beautiful.
Each turn of the
Nurburgring has a name.
Through the
Hatzenbach complex.
Dale
knows them all by heart.
He estimates he's
been around the Ring
about five thousand times.
Today, he's ruling the Ring...
overtaking everyone.
We're accelerating.
And I do believe
we've hit maximum speed.
We're very close
to the rev limiter.
There's the
rev limiter in top gear.
Well, there you go,
just been overtaken.
The top speed of
a CBR1000 is definitely
a little bit higher
than this car.
Ho-ho! Beautiful.
Carving through
the Sunday traffic.
Through the Foxhole.
Up the inside.
No one else is
going to overtake Dale today.
His personal best lap time
for the 13 mile track
is seven and a half minutes.
Less than eight is
considered very good.
He's got acceleration like
we can only dream of.
But
remember, speed kills.
You can't have a small
accident in the Nurburgring.
You can't forget for a second
that anything could
happen at any point.
You could come around the corner
and find an accident.
You could come around the corner
and find, as I did one time
a gentleman on a bicycle
with some recycling bottles
and he thought he was
on the, he thought he was
on a footpath or something.
Big accident up ahead.
I'm going to slow right down.
Oil spill.
The slow-down
means Dale is not going to set
any personal records today...
so he focuses on fun.
Very high-speed
corners, just turn the car in.
Really nice feeling in the apex
you can really feel
the limits of the tires.
We're a fast-forward car
in a slow-motion world.
Big g-force through
the Karussell.
The Caterham performed
absolutely excellently
it's so light, it's
incredibly nimble, it's
so agile, it just turns
left to right without
even thinking about it.
A very technical corner
now, the Caterham
really
really enjoys
corners like these.
We're just balancing the car,
not quite full gas.
Now with full gas!
Past the gantry.
eight minutes seven seconds.
Not my fastest lap, I'm
sure but certainly a lot of fun.
He gives the
Caterham a rave review...
same as he does the Nurburgring.
If you have even
the smallest amount
of petrol in your veins,
you really need to do a lap
on the Nurburgring,
just to say you've done it.
Now we're going
from incredible cars
to awesome airplanes. You see
this new military plane
from Spain can transform
from a hospital
to a cargo vessel
back to a passenger plane
in less time than it
takes to book a flight
Have a look.
It
may not look like it
but the people
on this assembly line
are building massive
passenger vans.
These babies boast
more than 5,000 horsepower
and travel at 300 miles an hour.
They can fly.
Really fly.
Okay, these are no
ordinary passenger vans.
You're looking at
the C295 airplane.
And, just like passenger vans
their insides can change.
You can expand cargo space,
or shrink it down...
But they're not for
running the kids around.
They're for military and
humanitarian missions.
The C295 is one
of the planes they build
at Airbus Military
in Seville, Spain.
It's got some
pretty cool features
like 360-degree radar
designed to detect airplanes
up to 250 miles away.
And an infrared system
that can cut through the dark
to reveal objects at night,
not to mention bad weather.
But the most interesting thing
is what can happen in the back.
In its stripped-down version,
the C295 is a transport aircraft
that can fly up to
11 hours non-stop
carrying cargo and personnel.
But, in just
one hour on the ground
it can transform into
a surveillance aircraft
thanks to customized
pallets, or modules
that slide on, and off.
For example, this is the
maritime patrol set-up.
In keeping with
the components theme
each C295 starts
as a mix of parts
flown in from different areas
of Spain, Chile,
Turkey and Indonesia.
The components are then
assembled here, in Seville.
There are more
than 80 of these planes
flying in ten countries
around the world
places like Afghanistan,
Iraq and Kosovo.
There are orders for more.
According to
the customer demand
we need to build
an aircraft every 11 days.
To make
sure there's no downtime
each workstation features
a computer readout
of status of each plane,
and work to be done.
They're making sure
everything's in its place
and that there's
a place for everything
on board this
passenger van of the skies.
Coming up, on "How Tech Works"
we'll catch up with the
tech wizards at Mercedes Benz.
And see what's in store
for the road ahead.
Get ready to roll,
into the very near future.
And we'll take part in
what can only be described
as an extreme go-kart race.
Welcome back to "How Tech Works"
I'm Dr. Basil Singer.
Now when it comes to car design
manufacturers usually
have to work within
certain restrictions, like
for instance, what
materials do you use?
What mechanical
principles can you employ?
And what budget do
you have to work with?
Well, just imagine
what you could accomplish
if there were no restrictions?
That's the fun challenge
facing the design team
at Mercedes Benz in California
limited only by
their imaginations.
This is
the Mercedes Biome.
It's light-weight,
Eco-friendly and biodegradable.
This technological marvel
is the car of the future
if its lead designer
has his way.
It's his talent that drives many
of the company's
image-defining models.
My name is Hubert Lee, I am 37
and I am the
Creative Director of
Mercedes Benz
Advanced Design California.
Design
is usually top secret
but today, we get
an exclusive look
at the Mercedes
Biome's development.
So I want to
take you to the back room
where normally a lot of
people don't really get to see.
can we stop? Yeah.
Okay, now you can come in.
The Biome
and all of our cars
that we work on
they all get put together here.
The Biome is
a first for Lee's design team.
There
were no boundaries
there were no limitations.
We could do whatever
we wanted to do.
With that
kind of creative license
they embrace what might be
technologically possible
down the road.
I wanted our
designers to not be restricted.
Just go all out, just be crazy
and just come up
with a concept we think
could be possible some day.
They
begin by imagining
the seemingly impossible.
What if the car
was grown from nature.
What if the car
was part of nature.
And what if the car
at the end of its life cycle
would get composted.
Then
commit to the idea
that in the future, seeds
will be coded with car DNA.
Mercedes Benz has
the star that is our identity
so we thought having
the star as a seed
would be cool.
So the front star
would actually morph
and grow into what
we call the interior.
The rear star would
grow into the exterior.
Imagining they control
every aspect of the vehicle
from weight to durability
they move through
their usual process.
So this is our designer area.
This is where the initial
creative process happens.
With
one notable exception.
We created
the environment first
before we actually
designed the car.
When we decided on the story
of actually growing the car
we decided that
rather than having
a really industrial
factory, that we
would go with more of a
a greenhouse type of inspiration
and so very sunlit, very
open, and actually growing
the individual cars underwater.
With the
world of the vehicle locked
focus returns
to shaping its look.
It had to look organic
but aesthetically pleasing
basically beautiful.
So before people even
get to know the concept
they are instantly drawn
to the car because it's just
beautiful, it's a work of art.
Movie software
refines these early sketches
by turning them
into digital models.
Next step is...
I think we should try
to integrate the wheel
to the body a little bit more.
Then,
the Biome goes 3D.
From the
digital data we would mill out
a scale model in clay
where we'll do our
surface refinements
and fine-tuning.
And if we need
if we think we need more detail
work on it, this is
where it happens.
The concept car's
interior is just as detailed.
It's got a
diamond seating configuration
so the driver
will actually sit
in the center far forward.
The side passengers
will sit in the sides
The rear passenger
will be sitting in the back
facing rearward.
The power-train
the suspension
the lights
everything will be combined into
these hub motors.
When
it's all put together
the Biome looks pretty cool
and promises a smooth ride.
I imagine
the ride experience
to be very smooth,
like flowing through air.
But how serious is
Mercedes Benz about production?
We didn't actually give
give it a set date or a time.
We just wanted to
throw it out there.
Maybe some day this is possible.
Earlier in the show
we checked out
the incredible road warriors
on the famous
Nurburgring in Germany.
And now, as they say
for something
completely different.
These road warriors
are just as competitive
as their German counterparts.
But, and there's always a but
for these chaps from Yorkshire
the biggest challenge may
just be the cars themselves.
Over
30 miles per hour.
Two kilometers downhill.
These go-karts
are about to push the
limits of gravity power.
At stake
the prestigious Rickety
Downhill Challenge Trophy.
If you think this looks dodgy
well, you should
check out the carts.
This is the leftovers
from my extension at home.
This used to be a bed.
I more or less just,
laid down on a bit of ply and
traced around myself.
One day
before the big race
we're on the ground.
This is the workshop,
of Colin Furze.
One of us was bored, thought,
you know, wouldn't it be fun
if we all built go-karts
and race them.
And and he was right.
It would be fun, so here we go.
Let's see what happens.
Course
designer and contender
today, Colin's
giving a sneak peek
at the making of
his own street racer.
To win the trophy, he's
pulling out all the stops.
Well, maybe not all of them.
As far as design and
technology is concerned
it's lacking in that.
So the R & D department's
not done, not put a lot
of effort into this one.
The main
components of Colin's machine
are rubbish.
Where you see wood pallets
he sees a chassis.
Yes!
Where
you see a mountain bike
Colin sees pre-built steering.
His rear tires were
taken from a kid's bike
one of the
neighbors' kids, that is.
He'll get them back one day.
As for brake cable,
well, that cost a pound.
The only pound spent.
Grandma's pillow!
As the
finishing touches are added
Colin's getting excited.
Excellent!
This is my interpretation of,
of my Downhill Challenger,
I suppose.
It's basically got
everything I want it to.
It steers, it brakes.
And it looks rubbish.
It's perfect
for tomorrow's race
but is it a winner?
First time going up against
everyone else's carts.
We'll find out if
I've built something
that's worth building
or if it's just going to be
a pile of wood.
On an
abandoned stretch of road
at the outskirts of town,
race day has arrived.
Colin gets his first look
at the competition.
It's basically an old bike
with an extra wheel on the back
because I was told it
needed to have three wheels.
So I've got a wood-cutting
disc on this side
for the go-karts
that's made from wood
and I've got a metal-cutting
disc on this side
for the ones made of metal.
Today
I think the boys in the garage
have been working well and
it should be perfected.
As the competitors
step up to the starting line
Colin has one last
trick up his sleeve.
So we thought, you know,
just to spice it up a little bit
we'd add a couple of
things in which are
completely non-related
to your kart-building.
So at the start of
the race you have to
down a can of fizzy drink.
Also at the end of
the course we have
a selection of saws
and pieces of wood.
So the person
that gets there first
will get a thick piece of wood
to cut with a very small saw.
But they don't know it yet.
So when they're
helling down the course
they don't know
that the faster they go
maybe the worse
situation it's gonna be
putting them in.
Three! Two! One! Go!
And as the
first soft drink can drops
it's time to ride.
One by one the racers
hit the pavement
but Colin is already struggling.
Finally, he's off too,
in last place.
Now gravity, and
the cart design take over.
The drinking has spread out
the entire field.
As the leaders try
desperately to stay in front
the fast carts are
making up lost ground.
At the bottom it's
Pappy Boy arriving first
with Simo in behind.
And that speck on
the horizon, that's Colin!
He's moved into 3rd!
All that's left now
is the sawing.
And today...
Yes!
A bigger saw beats
a fast cart, hands down.
And this year's Rickety Cup
Downhill Challenge Trophy
goes to
Colin Furze!
Well, I suppose my idea
of the wood sawing
is, kind of what
gave it to me, really.
Because I think I got there
just in time to get the right
saw and the right bit of wood.
But there we are.
It worked a treat.
Just goes to show? The
fastest cart don't always win.
Have you ever
heard of the phrase
don't quit your day job?
Well, maybe those lads
will find a way
to make a career out of
the Rickety Downhill Challenge
but, that's all the time
we've got today.
Thanks very much for watching.
Until next time,
I'm Basil Singer.