Top Gear (2002–…): Season 12, Episode 6 - Episode #12.6 - full transcript
Richard road tests two new cars, the Caterham R500 and the Veritas RS3. Jeremy and James find out to see whether cars that are made from Communist Countries are that good. Jeremy road tests the new Ford Fiesta extensively.
Tonight, Boris Johnson is the mayor-
in our reasonably priced car. Yeah!
Jeremy attempts an old-fashioned
sensible road-test of
the new Ford Fiesta.
And has Communism ever
produced a good car?
Hello! Hello. And welcome.
Thank you. We start with this
phenomenal new Caterham
that is actually too small
for Jeremy to fit in.
Happily, I fit in it perfectly,
which is why I have been driving it.
And here it comes now.
And there it goes.
and it likes to go this quickly
all the time.
Ye gods! This is something else!
It moves with the agility of a flea.
Every little input through the
steering, the brakes, the throttle,
you get a result every time.
The figures that go with this
little thing are off the scale.
0-60, 2.9 seconds.
Power to weight,
520 horsepower per tonne.
That's the same as a Bugatti Veyron.
If you define driving excitement
as just raw, pure adrenalin then...
well, this is it.
And I'm really glad
I'm driving it on our track.
But not for the
reason you might think.
No, the reason I'm glad to be here
is that no-one can see me.
Allow me to explain. This is the To-
Gear Excellence/Embarrassment graph,
and it measures how good the car
is to drive against how
embarrassing it is to be seen in.
Some examples - the Alfa Romeo
Spider is a pretty shonky thing to
drive
but very cool to be seen in,
so it sits about here on our graph.
The Audi RS4 is undeniably
very, very good to drive,
but driven exclusively by cocks,
so pretty embarrassing to be
seen in - it ends up about here.
Last example, Citroen Pluriel -
well, that's terrible to drive
and really very embarrassing to be
seen in, so it sits right up here.
Finally,
the Caterham R500 Superlight.
Well, there's no denying it is
absolutely brilliant to drive,
but also catastrophically
embarrassing to be seen in,
because it's driven only
by geeks and nerds,
so it ends up well in
the problem area of the graph...
up here.
What we need then, really, is a
Caterham that's OK to be seen in.
And this could be a contender.
It's called the Veritas RSIII,
and there's certainly no problem
with its appearance,
because it looks like a
1930s racing car from the future.
Now, you've probably never heard
of the Veritas, and that
usually only means two things.
Firstly,
it's built by a man in a shed.
Secondly, that man's wife
will leave him
when the bank manager forces him
to sell the house
to pay for his fibreglass lash-up.
However, the Veritas is German
and, annoyingly, German shed cars
can be as good as most other
people's factory cars.
This incredible body is hand-crafte-
from carbon fibre and Kevlar
with precision -
and that's German precision,
remember, which is the best sort.
Then there's the engine,
which is a V8 from BMW's M division.
Now, the M division don't sell
their engines to cowboys or losers,
so the Veritas has got a
good job reference right there.
And what this also means is that th-
Veritas is pretty quick.
Woah! Where have I felt that
before?
Oh, yeah, in that Caterham
about five minutes ago.
This V8 once powered the BMW M3
but has been tuned up from 420
to 473 horsepower.
0-60, 3.6 seconds.
Every time you stamp on the
throttle,
this thing just drop-kicks your
stomach half a mile
back down the road.
ENGINE REVS
The reason for this
speed isn't just power.
It's also down to weight -
or rather lack of it.
The Veritas only weighs a snatch
over 1,000 kilos, but then it would,
because you don't get ABS, traction-
control or a windscreen,
and there's no roof,
just a sort of submarine hatch
covering the passenger seat.
But this absence of anything
does come at quite a price -
£246,948, to be exact.
But you do get this glorious
speedboat-style wooden flooring
and these hand-milled
bespoke switches
and, well, couple that with the
fact that, in the jet set,
there's generally one born every
minute, and it all sort
of makes sense, really.
At least what the Veritas lacks
in toys or value for money
it does make up for in history -
because, many decades ago, Veritas
was a German sports car company
and they made the very first
German Formula One car.
Which means, if I apply some
Top Gear logic, this thing
should be good through the corners.
TYRES SCREECH
In fact, it's nowhere near as
sharp as the dweeby Caterham.
The biggest problem by a country
mile is the big round thing
in front of me.
appears to have been taken
from a lorry.
I mean, look, I have to keep
turning, keep turning, take my
hands off and do some more turning.
Now, Veritas say they
won't be selling cars to
customers until next year,
and that by then the steering will
have been sorted out but, even if
it is, this won't be the car for me.
It's just too serious.
The price is too serious.
The engine, Kevlar...
I want my Caterham back.
I want my fun back.
APPLAUSE
Very good, but Hammond... Yes.
..I'm slightly perplexed.
You say if you drive around in
one of these you look a dweeb.
Yes. You know Jeremy's wife's got
one of these? Ah... Very
fond of it, big fan.
She's here today. All right...
She wants a word with you.
Thank you(!)
Anyway, if you drive one of
these and you look a dweeb,
how do you think you look in that?
Emeritus Professor of History?
LAUGHTER
Edward Fox, perhaps?
Or a big, slobbering...
No, no. The thing is, this costs
£212,000 more than the Caterham.
Exactly, so you're paying a
lot more for a car that's worse.
Well, to find that out, we'll have
to see how fast they go
round our track,
and for that we need
our tame racing driver.
Some say one of his legs gets
longer when he sees
a pretty lady.
LAUGHTER
And that I haven't done one of
these for some time and I've
forgotten to make up a second thing.
LAUGHTER
All we know is he's called The Stig.
And he's off!
Lots of wheel-spin off the line but-
then it digs in and unleashes the
full force of that four-litre V8.
Powers down towards the first
corner.
Turns in rather gingerly,
it must be said.
I should add, since I drove
the car, Veritas have given it
a faster steering rack, which
should make it easier
to drive quickly.
Stig suddenly having
no problems at Chicago.
Down to Hammerhead now,
hard on the brakes.
Turns it in. Seemed to scrub off
quite a bit of speed there.
But he's right back on it now,
kicking the tail out on the exit.
Let's see him really wind
it up for the follow-through.
Here he goes.
Doesn't actually
sound like a V8 there.
Just two corners left.
Going into the penultimate corner.
Very smooth. Just Gambon left.
Very composed into there,
just a little flick of opposite
lock, and across the line.
APPLAUSE
And it...
A big V8 in there, powerful car.
So let's have a look. It did it
in 1.24.02,
which is faster than an Audi R8.
That's a quick time.
Well done, Veritas.
Now we must find out if
the Caterham
can do any better.
Off it goes again,
and let's just see how quickly the
Caterham gets off the line.
It is like a little flea,
this thing.
Piles it into the first corner,
locking up the brakes.
Like the Veritas, the R500 has got
no ABS or other electronic nonsense.
Beautiful drift
through the other side.
Just sliding it around Chicago.
That is how
this car should be driven.
Hammerhead now. Stig is so excited
he's flipped on the indicator.
He's rarely had so
much fun out here.
You really notice that bump on
Hammerhead in a car as light as
this.
Only problem is that lack of
weight can make it hard to
get heated with the tyres on.
This is a very cold day, remember.
That two-litre Ford engine,
half the cylinders and capacity of
the Veritas but, by God, it flies.
Neat through the penultimate corner.
Stig really on it now,
loving every minute.
Slings it through Gambon,
and across the line.
APPLAUSE
Obviously, the big question is,
did it go faster than the Veritas?
In fact, it did go faster -
quite a bit faster, quite
a lot faster, actually.
Quite a heck of a lot
faster, because it's up here!
1.17.9. Look at that!
1.17.9! Nearly as fast
as a Zonda F Convertible!
That means the £36,000 Caterham
is faster than a £1 million
Bugatti Veyron. I just...!
APPLAUSE
An amazing little car!
Absolutely fabulous.
And now the news,
and it's great news,
ladies and gentlemen.
It's news to warm
the hearts of nations.
Jeremy Clarkson has lost his voice.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Mate, I'm sorry. I know!
Imagine how we feel!
They're gutted, mate.
They're gutted.
But the good news is that means
we can talk about whatever we
like and say what we like.
So, let's...
LAUGHTER
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
Let's get on with the news. I
thought we'd start this week
with talking about this
magazine called Heat.
Ooh, yeah?
LAUGHTER
Every year, they do a survey in
which they ask the whole world
to tell them their sort of
weirdest crush,
their strangest, freakiest,
oddest, most embarrassing,
ridiculous person to fancy.
And, well, do you wanna guess?
He's won it, ladies and gentlemen!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Here he is! Look at that!
Yeah! "Number one weird crush."
And the other thing, ladies and
gentlemen, in the same magazine...
This is actually quite poetic,
in the romance.
He's in the same magazine as his
boyfriend, look! Aw! Will Young.
And he loves him so much.
Jeremy, I'm really pleased that
you should share magazine space
with Will Young, your boyfriend.
You know what he did the other
day, when he still had his voice?
He came into the office and went,
"Have you heard Will's new single?
It's fantastic!" He loves it.
"Will"! He went on about it all the
time. "I love Bill's new song."
He does.
Can I just say... Oh, it speaks!
Or sort of squeaks.
Yeah, no... That's just a noise.
Are you deflating? What's that?
Synthetic saliva?!
It means that I have
just a few minutes of speaking. Oh!
So you need more saliva?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've
no doubt we can oblige with that.
LAUGHTER
How do you know it's synthetic
and isn't just some bloke's...?
LAUGHTER
Gobbing...
HE MIMICS SPITTING
Bottle it.
You can shut up for a
kick-off as well.
What is that noise you're making?
Have you seen his eye?
He's got the biggest eye
infection I've ever seen!
At least I don't look like a
mutant!
Has it come to this?
I'm working with these two.
This isn't a television
programme any more. It's a colony!
LAUGHTER
I tell you what, instead of
hurling abuse at each other, why...
Excuse me. Why don't we do the
news?
Yes, let's do the news.
Good news, OK?
We haven't been asked to do
the commentary on the Formula One
coverage on the BBC next year.
No, it's good news.
What they've got, they've brought
Martin Brundle over from ITV.
That's fantastic. We'll be able
to watch the slow march of
his trousers up his stomach.
LAUGHTER
They've got Eddie Jordan.
He's gonna be a pundit. That's
fantastic. Eddie's a great guy.
David Coulthard is the other
pundit, and that worries me.
I think that means that on
lap two of every race your
telly will suddenly go off.
Or it'll just fall off the stand
for no reason.
"Why have you done that?"
Apparently, they've got Murray
Walker involved. They have. Murray
Walker's coming back to the BBC.
He is. Yeah.
AUDIENCE CHEERS
Bless him. It is good news.
Did you know, though, he's 84?
He'll be at Silverstone going, "It
were all trees when I were a lad."
Ferrari's pulled in
with their first pit stop.
Let's go to Murray Walker.
"Can someone change me bag?
It's full again."
commentating
on F1, that's pretty cool.
You won't be commentating on
anything. Look! I've just thought.
I wanna move it on. You know the
Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson?
She recently sold her Jaguar.
It has ended up in the hands of -
it was in the papers this week -
hands of a cabbie.
Steve Coulson, 31,
of the north somewhere.
He's gone to the papers
because he found that she's left
all the addresses she's been to
in the sat nav,
still programmed into the system.
He is saying,
"What if I'd been a terrorist?
"This car is a suicide
bomber's dream."
Now one of the addresses in there,
Windsor Castle.
Another, Buckingham Palace.
LAUGHTER
I think some people know
where those things are already.
No, don't laugh, this is a
national security nightmare, it is.
And also, he has inadvertently made-
himself the world's most hunted man.
I'm presuming he's looked at this
sat nav and seen the addresses.
He knows where Windsor Castle is.
Every terrorist organisation in
the world is going to be after him
for his lethal secret knowledge.
LAUGHTER
I think there's only one decent
course of action here. What?
Assuming he has destroyed it,
that's fine. He has read it,
therefore he must kill himself
and take his knowledge to the grave.
Now, there's a new Mini convertible.
It's got better engines,
bigger boot.
But the thing that caught my eye is-
it's fitted with something called
an "openometer".
I'm not making this up.
An openometer tells you
how much you
have driven it with the roof off.
Well, what's the point in that?
Why not have a dial that
tells you how many times you've
driven through Leicester?
Why would you want to know what you-
drove with the roof up,
and what you drove with the
roof down? It makes no sense.
Do you remember the early Corvettes,
they had a little dial that showed
you how many revs the engine had
done. Revs? Revs, yeah.
What, going around at 5,000 rpm?
It would be wider than the car
just to get the dial in.
I worked it out from
my old Porsche actually. Your what?
My old Porsche is 25 years old.
8.4 times 10 to the eight revs.
You worked that out...
LAUGHTER
..for your car? You've spent time...
Wow, so you must actually have done-
everything there is to do
in the whole world
to get to the bottom of the list
of everything a human being can do.
What's it like on the top of
Everest? It's all right.
Richard, I went to
a dinner party the other day.
I was sat next to a girl who said
she couldn't believe James May
was still single.
There's your answer!
There's your answer!
Anyway, look, tough times
for carmakers, as we know.
They're all in really, really
deep...
Oh, dear, I've arrived at a point
where I can't say the word
I need to say - deep mess.
They've resorted to offering
incredibly long test drives
to people just to
get them into the showrooms.
Lexus will lend you a car
for 48 hours - two days.
BMW say you can go in one
of their cars for 100 miles.
Peugeot, 24 hours. Peugeot? Peugeot.
Are they surprised when people
bring it back after 24 minutes?
That's enough of that!
Now the reporter who uncovered
this story, he said he went to a
Peugeot dealership to try a 207.
And the salesman said,
"I can go one better than that, sir.
"I can lend you a 4007."
That's not ONE better, is it?
That's 3,800 better he went,
just to try and get a sale.
One better than a 207 is...
work it out. It's...
it's herpes. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Think about this logically.
How many people here drove to the
studio today?
Everybody? In my Peugeot.
Brilliant car. Best in the world.
What's a brilliant car?
Peugeot 406 with a six-player CD.
Best car in the world.
That's you told!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He's making a fine case for it.
He thinks the Peugeot 406,
with a six-player CD,
is the best car in the world.
Not an Enzo, as it turns out.
We've been wasting our time.
I'm glad you brought that up,
because I'm going to
skip on down, if I may.
The number of lunatics in Britain
has been halved.
I know there's some evidence to
suggest that they're out and in
the countryside and among us.
But I have arrived at
this conclusion
by a simple and alarming fact
that came across my desk
only this morning.
Electric car sales are down by half.
That must mean that loonies
are fewer and far between.
Really, I genuinely
congratulate you for your bravery.
It seems these days that absolutely
everything you buy is made in China.
Chopsticks,
Ming vases, mah jong sets...
Dogs. Exactly.
Some people are saying that
soon we will be buying cars
made in the People's Republic.
Thing is, though,
China is a Communist country.
And that got James and me wondering.
Communism - has it ever produced
a good car?
We thought it would ironic to
film our hunt here
at the Greenham Common airbase,
home in the 1980s
to 96 US Air Force missiles
and several hundred lesbians.
Today they're all gone,
and in their place we find this.
It's a Lada Riva, which started
out in life as a Fiat 124,
one of the most advanced
sports saloons of the period.
But the Russians made a few changes-
to the original design.
They replaced the excellent disc
brakes with drums, which were worse.
They fitted a starting handle,
a manual fuel pump,
and they made the body
from much, much thicker steel.
As I shall now demonstrate...
..with my hammer. Ready?
It's nuclear.
The heaviest part of the car,
though, was not the nuclear
bunker bodywork.
It was the steering.
I actually believe
it's set in concrete.
In fact, the only good thing
about this car is that
you could drive it in a hat.
Let me give you
an example of its terribleness.
The rear brakes were
made from aluminium.
They must have thought,
"Aha, that's very advanced!
"The West hasn't thought of this."
There's a very good
reason for that though.
Aluminium has the same braking
properties, really, as...cheese.
TYRES SCREECH
Despite all these things,
the Riva is still being built today-
under licence in Egypt.
Imagine that,
a 40-year-old Italian design,
improved by the Russians and
now built by a bunch of Egyptians.
I can't think of
anything worse than that!
Well, I can.
You see, the Lada was not the only
car to come from the Soviet Union.
There were hundreds of
the damn things -
GAZes, VAZes,
ZILs, ISHes, ZAZes...
..and this, the Moskvitch 408.
Now this car was originally launched-
at the 1964 British
Earl's Court Motor Show.
And it was Communism's response
to our very own people's car,
the Mark I Cortina.
And as you'd expect, the Moskvitch
was very cheap. Just £679.
The Cortina was a whole pound
more expensive.
The gearbox is sloppy,
the suspension is bouncy,
the steering is very heavy
and yet very vague.
And just listen to the noise
when you hit 40?
ENGINE SHUDDERS
Interestingly, this particular one
was built in the factory
where they also made
the AK47 rifle.
The difference is,
this is much more lethal.
So, whose car was the most wretched?
That is simply the worst car in
the world. Even worse than this.
Disagree.
Have you seen the pedals in this?
Look where the accelerator pedal is-
in relation to the other two.
Thought so. A rev counter. Yes?
You decadent, capitalist pig!
Ownership of a rev counter is theft.
This is the colour
of a prosthetic limb.
You've got wipers on your headlights.
They don't work! Not the point.
It's aspirational.
Rear suspension made out of cart
springs. What have you got on yours?-
Coils. Exactly.
Elitist! The coils, James,
are from a Bulgarian's biro.
We decided to settle our argument
by finding out which was
the slowest
in a quarter-mile drag race.
And, to spice it up, we would be
racing against a Western car
from the time,
a Ford Cortina 1600 E, and a dog.
Fast as you can. Don't cheat.
Why would I need to cheat?
Er... Launch control?
No, doesn't have that. Er...
Clearly,
the Commie cars would be a while.
So let's move on - to this...
..the Zzzgggz 968.
Maybe this could save the day
for Socialism.
Oh, my God, there's no key!
ENGINE STARTS
Yeah!
Interestingly it was
rear-engined, so it was exactly
the same as a Porsche 911...
..except for one thing.
Look at this. Under the carpet in
here, the passenger foot-well,
there's a little flap.
You open it and there's a hole.
The idea is that you park your car
on a frozen lake,
cut a hole in the ice,
drop your fishing line
through the hole, plug in your
interior lamp, like that.
Then you hang that up,
and you can sit back and
do an evening's fishing.
Not even a Maybach has this!
Better still, the Zappo 968
was available with a choice of
trim levels.
Unusual in a single party state.
This is the standard 968, OK? Yes.
What do you suppose the 968 B2 was?
It was an estate version. No.
It was for people who had
the use of only one foot. Ah!
968 B?
That's the least of its problems.
968 B? Twin carb?
No. For people who didn't
have the use of either foot.
968 A?
People with...
..one foot and two hands but
one of them is frozen?
No. That was the one
with the 0.7 litre engine. Wow!
Now, if you're name begins with
"Ar" and ends with "thur Scargill",
you might claim we're wrong to blame-
Communism for all these
truly terrible cars.
You might say that it's just
a Russian problem,
Well, Mr Scargill, a quick canter
through some other Eastern Bloc
cars will prove you wrong.
Take this, the Wartburg,
from East Germany.
When they made a rally version
of this,
they had to fit uprated brakes,
which they got from an Austin Maxi.
How bad do the standard brakes have-
to be for a Maxi's to be better?
And then there was the equally
East German Trabant,
which was made from,
and I'm not making this up...cotton.
Mr Khrushchev once said,
"We will bury you."
What with? This?
It's actually made from leather.
I think it looks like
somebody's crashed a motorcycle
into the back of a cow.
And then from Poland
there's the FSO pick-up truck.
And, of course, we know
a thing or two on Top Gear
about how to test such things.
This free world Toyota, for example.
We dropped it from
a 23-storey tower block.
And it worked afterwards.
So, surely the rugged FSO,
from the world's best plumbers,
could survive this?
'It didn't.'
Maybe we should try dropping
it from a slightly lower height?
It's a bit late now, isn't it?
NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS
Finally, from Britain,
there was the Morris Marina.
The unpleasant log laid by British
Leyland after Communism crept,
like a Nietzsche red blanket,
over the shop floor.
God almighty. God almighty!
Britain made this.
They have the effrontery,
the bare-faced cheek,
to call this super?
I suppose
you weren't actually allowed back
then to call it Trotskyite crap.
Maybe that's what the
TC version stood for.
Still, having it here enables us
to answer an important question.
You see, the Cold War ended before
we ever got the chance to find out
who would have won
if we'd actually started fighting.
Yeah, but now we can
find out with a race.
We have all the ingredients here.
It's cold,
the track is much too narrow,
it's too pockmarked, it's bumpy.
I shall be driving the Morris
Marxist and you shall be in the...
What is it? The Lenin 1.6 SLX.
Lovely. And the winner gets Berlin.
And the loser
has to sacrifice his bath plug.
Now we'll see, Mr Clarkson.
Oi!
Welcome to the inaugural round of
the BTCC, The British Touring
Communism Championships.
Welcome to the inaugural round of
the BTCC, The British Touring
Communism Championships.
I can get him on the inside. Yes!
Oh, no, he's coming
through but he has an 86 brake
horse power - I've only got 83.
May! Marvellous.
Russian communism is better
than British communism.
How do you like that?
Come on, get out of my way!
This thing is impossible to steer.
Whoa! I've missed the track.
I'll take him here.
Get off!
No, May, no. I'm back in the lead.
The handling is simply diabolical.
There's no other word for it.
Yes, the Polaris is way
in the lead here.
Gaining. Gaining. No, wait!
The SS18 is coming through.
BUMP
He's hit me. He's hit me.
There's nothing I can do.
Ha! That will annoy him.
There's some catching up
to be done now!
Come on, Marina!
There he is, he's in my sights.
'The Marina caught the Lada
quite quickly,
'which means we would have won the
Cold War if we'd started fighting.'
Yes, what you think of this?!
Argh! Goodbye, Mr May.
Oh, dear.
I seem to have accidentally
killed James May there.
Anyway... The miracle is not
that the Marina won that, it's that-
it was built in the first place.
In Russia, you had to work hard in
the car factories or you'd suddenly
discover how difficult it is to
mine Siberian salt while wearing
a hat made from your wife's head.
British Communists didn't really
bother with any of that.
Mostly, in fact, they didn't
bother turning up for work at all.
They'd simply get to the factory
gates where they'd spent the rest
of the day chatting and huddling
for warmth round a burning dustbin.
It does work well as a brazier.
But that's what they were best
at because they spent
more time with braziers than
they did making cars. It's true.
So far, we've established that
Communistical cars were not fast,
pretty, well engineered,
cheap or reliable.
But while all animals were equal,
some were more equal than others.
This is a GAZ Chaika. They made
just 144 of these every year,
and not one of them ever made
it in the hands of the proletariat.
These were for high-ranking
officials.
Well, ha, you know the KGB
used these?
Except theirs had
more powerful engines.
You should see the amount
of space back here.
You could chop up 30 dissidents
in the back of here.
'But despite all these plus points,
the Chaika isn't a good car.'
LOUD CLUNK
Was that a gear change? It was.
Is there a man in the gearbox
with a sledgehammer?
That's what it feels like.
That's unbelievable.
How is the steering - precise?
Yeah... No.
Don't do that. I'm doing 20mph.
How can I shoot you
if I can't sit still?
Top speed? 99mph.
So it can't even do 100? No.
With a 5.5 litre V8?! Quite.
I suspect this is as far
as we go, Mr Clarkson.
You're going to have to turn
it round. That's going to take
the rest of our lives. Oh, BEEP!
It's disappeared into
the bloody dashboard!
THEY LAUGH
I'm going to grab this camera
so you can actually see
what has happened here.
These are the buttons
that change the gears.
That's park, that's backwards
and that was forwards.
I promise you, I merely pressed it
and my finger just...
THEY LAUGH
'So they couldn't make
a decent luxury car either.
'But one about the other end of
the scale? Rugged simplicity.
'Surely this is good
Commie territory.'
It does seem to have been built
on relatively sensible principles.
It does seem to have been built
on relatively sensible principles.
Add weight and simplify.
'What's more, it had coiled springs
'- not the RSJs
you got in Land Rovers
'of the time - so it
was surprisingly comfortable.'
I once drove one of these down
a very heavily rutted track
at 50mph
and I was able to use
the cigarette lighter
because it was so smooth to light
a cigarette. It was that smooth.
I'd actually quite like to
demonstrate that for you now
but, unfortunately,
we don't live in a free country.
'We ploughed on through the field
and things looked promising.'
'But then...'
Oh, give up. We are in Berkshire
and it's been completely defeated.
If this comes out, I can stand
up like Rommel and guide you.
Argh!
We don't need that. Right.
Forwards, slowly.
Argh, no, no, no, no!
'In the end, we were pulled free by-
a decadent capitalist Land Rover.
'But we were reluctant to give up
on our little Niva.'
And it is quite a rugged,
personable little thing.
It is, actually. It is. It's the
sort of car you can give it a name.
It's got one - Niva.
Do you think we've actually found
the Communist car that we like?
No!
THEY LAUGH
Shall we get the train?
Simple message.
Don't buy a Chinese car until China-
renounces Communisticalness.
You pair of idiots.
Did it, what - slip your mind?
These three cars - Maserati,
Lamborghini, Ferrari.
All three built within 30 miles
of the Italian city Bologna which,
for 50 years and until nine
years ago, was run by
the Italian Communist Party.
Which means that actual Ferrari
was built by Communists.
I'm glad he brought that up
because London used to be
a communist city but now,
thanks to my guest,
it isn't any more.
Ladies and gentlemen, please...
You do this, my voice...
Go, quickly!
Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson!
How are you? Very well. Have a seat.
Thank you, Jeremy.
What's this? Is that for me?
It's my urine sample.
I'm very startled. What's that?
How can you be a journalist
and politician and still be loved?
Most people still love Boris!
I resent... I think I'd resist
your analysis there.
What you find is that people
are far from loving - shout all
sorts of hostile things. Who shouts
I was watching your programme
and someone was saying
I was a faffing around in trying
to remove the bendy buses.
Let's get straight... Yeah,
let's get straight to it.
How long have you been mayor
of London for? Eight months.
You said before you were mayor,
"I will get rid of the bendy
buses."
And I will. This Friday...
Burn them.
..I am told that we are
announcing the removal of
the bendy bus from
three routes, 80 buses.
You are talking
but I'm hearing music!
When's this happening?
They will be off by 2010.
For God's sake!
You are a very hard man to please.
A very hard man!
Anybody would think you were some
kind of crazed petrolhead.
LAUGHTER
I'm looking at what you've done,
or your initiatives, since you came
in here and it is extraordinary how-
I disagree with almost all of them.
LAUGHTER
Like not drinking on the tube.
I'm 48 years old and if I want
a refreshing pint on the tube...
A 44-year-old man can't tell me
not to. Well, listen...
Am I allowed to have a drink on the-
tube? No, you're not. Here's why.
There are people who drink on
the tube with a six packs of beer
who loll around swearing
and cursing who offer aggression
towards their fellow passengers.
And I think that removing that
possibility actually makes
the tube friendlier.
Although I have to admit, it was
rather wonderful that thousands
of people had a party,
hurling execration at my name...
Over that? Over that. It took
Margaret Thatcher ten years
to achieve that level
of unpopularity with
the youth of society.
I thought it was quite something
to have pulled it off
after only six weeks.
You are going to allow motorcycles
to travel in bus lanes.
From January there is going
to be a trial.
Because I think it would smooth,
smooth traffic flow,
provided those motorcyclists
remember that
they can't terrify vulnerable
road users such as cyclists.
What about bus drivers?
You cycle, have you not been
attacked by a bus driver?
You don't cycle?
No. Because I have a car.
Talk to the little one...
Hammond? Yes!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He...
He knows what he's talking about.
I remember watching your show
where he beat you hollow around
London on his bike.
You were going by speedboat,
he was far quicker than you.
He will confirm that bus drivers
are, in fact, extremely considerate.
What he actually says is they
are a load of murdering BEEP!
I speak from experience.
They look at their mirrors,
they know where you are
and by comparison with HGV drivers,-
they are extremely good.
No, I won't have that.
MUTTERING IN CROWD
Who thinks lorry drivers...
I'm a big fan of lorry drivers...
Well, I...!
Who thinks lorry drivers
are better than bus drivers?
Before I needlessly throw away the
lorry driver vote... You just have!
I just want to say
that they are not all bad...
LAUGHTER
But they need to look in their
mirrors. Let's move it on.
If I may.
You were the motoring
correspondent of GQ magazine.
Yes. Do you know...
Where's this going?
Do you know how much you
built up in parking tickets
on those cars that you tested?
I can tell you something, I jolly
well paid them because... Now.
Your publisher argues with that.
LAUGHTER
There were two phases
in our relationship.
There was the phase where they paid-
for the parking tickets and...
Do you know how much the phase
cost them
when they were paying for them? No.-
£4,500.
CROWD GROANS
So they may claim now!
While we're on the subject of this,-
there's a photograph -
we brought this up on
the programme a few weeks ago -
this is a message from you on
the back of one of the lovely buses.
Changing gears at lower revs
reduces your C02 emissions
and saves you money.
Very good. You've put that up.
Absolutely right.
Let me draw your attention to
something you wrote in GQ magazine.
"The essence of it is, in my view,
not to change up until you
hit about 6,000rpm."
In the case of the Ferrari 430...
LAUGHTER
..which I was...
I admit I was driving.
It may very well be that that
was the cleanest, greenest,
most fuel-efficient way...
of changing gear!
On your very track the other day,
I was introduced to this wonderful
electric car by the proprietor
of this Dunsfold track. Yes.
And we've all got to go electric.
1p a mile. Where does
the power come from, Boris?
It comes from the plug.
In fact, I'll tell you something...
LAUGHTER
You...
..I make this prophecy,
Jeremy, that
the gear is going to be obsolete
and your programme will have
to change its name to Top Plug.
Can I just talk about the Olympics?
I know this is off topic.
We are going to make
a mess of it, aren't we?
No. It's going to be fantastic.
We're going to ruin it. No.
We're going to do it brilliantly
but in our own particular,
ingenious...British way.
LAUGHTER
I just have this vision
of the opening ceremony
and there'll be one council house
in the middle of it and
a bloke going, "I'm not moving!"
You know in Beijing when it closed,
you were there of course,
the British...
handing over ceremony, there was
a bus and a girl from the X Factor.
People would have thought,
"Great country."
Instead of going,
"That looks like BEEP."
People loved it with that thing
with Beckham kicking a football.
No, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin,
I'm very fond of that.
But Jimmy Page standing out
the back of a burning Jaguar,
power-sliding round.
Fantastic. Perhaps we should
commission some of your ideas for
the opening ceremony.
Let's do that, can we do that?!
I'll ring Jimmy Page immediately.
APPLAUSE
The lap was, pouring with rain. It
didn't go quite as smoothly as
perhaps you'd hoped.
Most people, as you know, spin off
on the second to last corner.
Boris decided he was going to
spin of on every single corner.
LAUGHTER
Who'd like to see Boris's
practices?
AUDIENCE: Yes!
Shall we have a look at some?
Second to last corner, there's the
traditional spot for going off.
Here we are on the final corner...
Here we go again.
Here we are on the actual
pass the tyres was there.
The problem is,
Boris, you can't turn left.
Wait - you go right here and...
First person ever to go off on the
follow-through.
Well done, Boris.
The atmospheric conditions
were challenging.
It was your fault.
If you believe that cars cause
global warming, get a Range
Rover and it will warm it up.
Anyway, you did eventually
complete a lap.
Who'd like to see that?
AUDIENCE: Yes!
Let's have a look at Boris's
lap here. It really is wet,
isn't it?
There's a determined-looking man
behind the wheel there.
That's soaking wet.
Trinny and Susannah wet.
Looking smooth.
HE MUMBLES
Talking in Greek.
HE MUMBLES
More funny noises.
And into the hammer head.
you are in the lines or not.
Yes, no, actually, well done.
Sounding patronising, I apologise.
This is good coming out.
No, hit the rev limit.
Happy, were we, with our gear
change?
That's lovely. Watch out for
the rubber tyres. The rubber tyres.-
Yes, missed those. Come on, Boris.
You've slowed.
Come on, faster, faster.
It's a gamble.
A bit wide but well held. There we
are, across the line.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
To be brutally honest,
in conditions such as those
you aren't really realistically...
Keith Allen would be our fastest
very wet lap on 1.51.
There is no point hoping for that.
No. I've no idea how fast it was.
Did it feel...
I thought it was pretty good.
Pretty sluggish. You think so? Yeah.
You did it in 1...
Which in itself in conditions
like that... I like that word.
Would you like to stop
the interview there. Yeah.
Good idea, because the
next bit is a 50... 57.4.
Which puts you... And give him
a round of applause...
I'm off the bottom. Now I look
at it, it's catastrophically bad.
LAUGHTER
There's no other word. It's the
slowest very wet. No, it's the same-
as Fiona Bruce. I feel proud.
Very proud, and it's been
marvellous having you here, Boris.
Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Every week on Top Gear we get
a stack of letters. But this week,
one in particular caught our eye.
It's from a Mr Needham and it says,-
"Why do not test cars properly any
more, have you forgotten how?"
This really hurt us so we decided
to take the new Ford Fiesta and do
a proper road test, like they used
to do on Top Gear in the old days.
We were quite looking forward to it-
but at the very last minute, Jeremy-
came in and said he wanted to do it.
Right. There's the car in
question, the new Fiesta.
What I thought I'd do is break
the road test down into segments.
Hopefully, cover all the bases.
Behind the extremely pretty body,
I'm sorry to report there are
one or two small problems.
The back seats, for
instance, do not fold flat.
Other cars in this price range
do have bigger boots.
However, despite this, there
is still room in the boot
for a zebra's head.
Pop the neck in first.
There we are. So if you're
a sort of Mafia game ranger,
that goes very nicely.
Then, in the back seat, there's
room for the traditional
2.2 children.
I should say so. This new car maybe-
the biggest Fiesta yet,
but it's a whopping 40 kilograms
lighter than the last model.
That'll help at the pumps.
There's even a 1.6 litre diesel
model called the Econetic,
which produces such a small amount
of carbon dioxide you pay
no road tax on it at all.
I wouldn't bother with that
particular model though, because
it'll almost certainly be sh...
Ever since the Ford Focus came
along in 1998, or whenever it was,
all Fords have had a driving feel
that you just don't get in other
cars of the same size or price.
This is no different.
Here, as I go through the
hammerhead, for example,
I can feel that it has a sort of
Volkswagen feel of solidity
and a Lotus feel of sportiness.
Rare to get that combination.
The steering has a linear response,-
understeer well taken,
no tread shuffle.
It feels fabulous.
And if you go for the 1.6 litre
TV CT engine that I have in this
test car, it's pretty fast as well.
Certainly, it will
easily do 70mph,
which is what I'm doing now.
That's the maximum speed that you
can go in Britain, so that's good.
Is this thorough enough for you,
Mr Needham? I hope so because
it's going well.
Hopefully not. Apart from the
fact it's made by Germans, most of
the equipment on this car has been
fitted to other Fords for years
and we've heard no horror stories.
There's an entry-level version,
which has no equipment on it at all-
so there's nothing to go wrong.
Do you want that one, though -
really, honestly, a basic model?
I bet that's also sh...
Of course it's easy to park. It's
got windows, a steering wheel.
There we are.
Next.
This can happen.
Oh, and it just has. Here we go!
Good grip. Power...
I am now
breaking the speed limit indoors.
He's right on my tail.
This is where
front-wheel-drive comes in.
Round the palm-tree, there we go.
He's taken out Costa Coffee.
The baddie has made the
classic baddie error.
He's got too much power.
I've got 120 horsepower in this.
You don't want any more
than that on marble.
The bears.
The handbrake.
Does he have to hit
absolutely everything?
Steering is light,
turning circle is good.
I was once chased through
a shopping centre
in Putney, actually, by baddies.
I had an original Mini and, I
must say, that was very good.
Just cut through
British Home Stores.
Dab on the handbrake
and there we go.
Mmm...
The Corvette is stuck
in British Home Stores. Turning
circle, not good enough.
I'm getting away.
Instruments are superb,
really sharp.
Handbrake!
TYRES SCREECH
The headlamps are brilliant.
Excellent range on full beam.
Look at him.
Look at him! He'll never follow me
if I go through here.
Oh, he is doing!
The upshot is that
after half-an-hour,
I got out of the shopping centre
and the 'Vette didn't.
Yes... Very.
Well, prices start at around £8,500-
but you need £11,000 to get
a decent mid-range model.
So if you have £11,000 to spend
on a car then, yes, you can.
But if you've only got 40p then,
The upshot is that
after half an hour,
I got out of the shopping centre
and the 'Vette didn't.
Yes. Very.
Well, prices start at around £8,500,
but you need £11,000 to get
a decent mid-range model.
So if you have £11,000 to spend
on a car, then yes, you can.
But if you've only got 40p,
then no, you can't.
Although it is quite large for
a supermini, very large, in fact,
it still fits
on the marines' LCV Mark 5
landing craft with room to spare.
Now, if you'll forgive me,
we are approaching the beach.
The gunfire has started.
Lads, do you want to mount up?
HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR
GUNFIRE
That gunfire can be
quite loud, can't it?
If you get that door shut...
You can barely hear it now.
GUNFIRE
Look at that! The smoke grenades
fit perfectly in the cup holders.
How much ammo can you get
in the glove box? Just two mags?
The windscreen is heated,
but not bullet-proof.
Stand by the beach!
You cold? Yeah, I am, actually.
HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
Let's go! Come on!
Come on, Fiesta!
That's a lot deeper than I thought!
Look at this
for a beach assault craft!
You've got a bit
of water coming in there.
Come on! Are we there yet?
You kids are being annoying.
Shoot them!
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
Where am I going, boys?
Do you want to shoot from in here?
Would that be more comfortable?
It's got electric windows.
I'll just put...
GUNFIRE
Go, go, go! Shoot the enemy
in the middle of its face!
Carry on, there's a plucky chap!
Well done.
These carpets are excellent.
No evidence at all
of the marines' muddy boots.
So, there you are, Mr Needham.
The most thorough test of a car ever
undertaken on British television.
The Fiesta's come through
with flying colours.
Drive safely.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Absolutely thorough. Well done.
Foot on the bonnet
at the end, traditional.
Jumper...all of it.
Anyway, that's all we've got
time for this week.
Next week, for reasons we don't
understand, we're on at 9pm.
We'll see you then, unless you're
watching this on Dave. In February.
in the middle of the afternoon.
In which case, we hope
you get a job soon.
Take care. See you soon. Bye.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
in our reasonably priced car. Yeah!
Jeremy attempts an old-fashioned
sensible road-test of
the new Ford Fiesta.
And has Communism ever
produced a good car?
Hello! Hello. And welcome.
Thank you. We start with this
phenomenal new Caterham
that is actually too small
for Jeremy to fit in.
Happily, I fit in it perfectly,
which is why I have been driving it.
And here it comes now.
And there it goes.
and it likes to go this quickly
all the time.
Ye gods! This is something else!
It moves with the agility of a flea.
Every little input through the
steering, the brakes, the throttle,
you get a result every time.
The figures that go with this
little thing are off the scale.
0-60, 2.9 seconds.
Power to weight,
520 horsepower per tonne.
That's the same as a Bugatti Veyron.
If you define driving excitement
as just raw, pure adrenalin then...
well, this is it.
And I'm really glad
I'm driving it on our track.
But not for the
reason you might think.
No, the reason I'm glad to be here
is that no-one can see me.
Allow me to explain. This is the To-
Gear Excellence/Embarrassment graph,
and it measures how good the car
is to drive against how
embarrassing it is to be seen in.
Some examples - the Alfa Romeo
Spider is a pretty shonky thing to
drive
but very cool to be seen in,
so it sits about here on our graph.
The Audi RS4 is undeniably
very, very good to drive,
but driven exclusively by cocks,
so pretty embarrassing to be
seen in - it ends up about here.
Last example, Citroen Pluriel -
well, that's terrible to drive
and really very embarrassing to be
seen in, so it sits right up here.
Finally,
the Caterham R500 Superlight.
Well, there's no denying it is
absolutely brilliant to drive,
but also catastrophically
embarrassing to be seen in,
because it's driven only
by geeks and nerds,
so it ends up well in
the problem area of the graph...
up here.
What we need then, really, is a
Caterham that's OK to be seen in.
And this could be a contender.
It's called the Veritas RSIII,
and there's certainly no problem
with its appearance,
because it looks like a
1930s racing car from the future.
Now, you've probably never heard
of the Veritas, and that
usually only means two things.
Firstly,
it's built by a man in a shed.
Secondly, that man's wife
will leave him
when the bank manager forces him
to sell the house
to pay for his fibreglass lash-up.
However, the Veritas is German
and, annoyingly, German shed cars
can be as good as most other
people's factory cars.
This incredible body is hand-crafte-
from carbon fibre and Kevlar
with precision -
and that's German precision,
remember, which is the best sort.
Then there's the engine,
which is a V8 from BMW's M division.
Now, the M division don't sell
their engines to cowboys or losers,
so the Veritas has got a
good job reference right there.
And what this also means is that th-
Veritas is pretty quick.
Woah! Where have I felt that
before?
Oh, yeah, in that Caterham
about five minutes ago.
This V8 once powered the BMW M3
but has been tuned up from 420
to 473 horsepower.
0-60, 3.6 seconds.
Every time you stamp on the
throttle,
this thing just drop-kicks your
stomach half a mile
back down the road.
ENGINE REVS
The reason for this
speed isn't just power.
It's also down to weight -
or rather lack of it.
The Veritas only weighs a snatch
over 1,000 kilos, but then it would,
because you don't get ABS, traction-
control or a windscreen,
and there's no roof,
just a sort of submarine hatch
covering the passenger seat.
But this absence of anything
does come at quite a price -
£246,948, to be exact.
But you do get this glorious
speedboat-style wooden flooring
and these hand-milled
bespoke switches
and, well, couple that with the
fact that, in the jet set,
there's generally one born every
minute, and it all sort
of makes sense, really.
At least what the Veritas lacks
in toys or value for money
it does make up for in history -
because, many decades ago, Veritas
was a German sports car company
and they made the very first
German Formula One car.
Which means, if I apply some
Top Gear logic, this thing
should be good through the corners.
TYRES SCREECH
In fact, it's nowhere near as
sharp as the dweeby Caterham.
The biggest problem by a country
mile is the big round thing
in front of me.
appears to have been taken
from a lorry.
I mean, look, I have to keep
turning, keep turning, take my
hands off and do some more turning.
Now, Veritas say they
won't be selling cars to
customers until next year,
and that by then the steering will
have been sorted out but, even if
it is, this won't be the car for me.
It's just too serious.
The price is too serious.
The engine, Kevlar...
I want my Caterham back.
I want my fun back.
APPLAUSE
Very good, but Hammond... Yes.
..I'm slightly perplexed.
You say if you drive around in
one of these you look a dweeb.
Yes. You know Jeremy's wife's got
one of these? Ah... Very
fond of it, big fan.
She's here today. All right...
She wants a word with you.
Thank you(!)
Anyway, if you drive one of
these and you look a dweeb,
how do you think you look in that?
Emeritus Professor of History?
LAUGHTER
Edward Fox, perhaps?
Or a big, slobbering...
No, no. The thing is, this costs
£212,000 more than the Caterham.
Exactly, so you're paying a
lot more for a car that's worse.
Well, to find that out, we'll have
to see how fast they go
round our track,
and for that we need
our tame racing driver.
Some say one of his legs gets
longer when he sees
a pretty lady.
LAUGHTER
And that I haven't done one of
these for some time and I've
forgotten to make up a second thing.
LAUGHTER
All we know is he's called The Stig.
And he's off!
Lots of wheel-spin off the line but-
then it digs in and unleashes the
full force of that four-litre V8.
Powers down towards the first
corner.
Turns in rather gingerly,
it must be said.
I should add, since I drove
the car, Veritas have given it
a faster steering rack, which
should make it easier
to drive quickly.
Stig suddenly having
no problems at Chicago.
Down to Hammerhead now,
hard on the brakes.
Turns it in. Seemed to scrub off
quite a bit of speed there.
But he's right back on it now,
kicking the tail out on the exit.
Let's see him really wind
it up for the follow-through.
Here he goes.
Doesn't actually
sound like a V8 there.
Just two corners left.
Going into the penultimate corner.
Very smooth. Just Gambon left.
Very composed into there,
just a little flick of opposite
lock, and across the line.
APPLAUSE
And it...
A big V8 in there, powerful car.
So let's have a look. It did it
in 1.24.02,
which is faster than an Audi R8.
That's a quick time.
Well done, Veritas.
Now we must find out if
the Caterham
can do any better.
Off it goes again,
and let's just see how quickly the
Caterham gets off the line.
It is like a little flea,
this thing.
Piles it into the first corner,
locking up the brakes.
Like the Veritas, the R500 has got
no ABS or other electronic nonsense.
Beautiful drift
through the other side.
Just sliding it around Chicago.
That is how
this car should be driven.
Hammerhead now. Stig is so excited
he's flipped on the indicator.
He's rarely had so
much fun out here.
You really notice that bump on
Hammerhead in a car as light as
this.
Only problem is that lack of
weight can make it hard to
get heated with the tyres on.
This is a very cold day, remember.
That two-litre Ford engine,
half the cylinders and capacity of
the Veritas but, by God, it flies.
Neat through the penultimate corner.
Stig really on it now,
loving every minute.
Slings it through Gambon,
and across the line.
APPLAUSE
Obviously, the big question is,
did it go faster than the Veritas?
In fact, it did go faster -
quite a bit faster, quite
a lot faster, actually.
Quite a heck of a lot
faster, because it's up here!
1.17.9. Look at that!
1.17.9! Nearly as fast
as a Zonda F Convertible!
That means the £36,000 Caterham
is faster than a £1 million
Bugatti Veyron. I just...!
APPLAUSE
An amazing little car!
Absolutely fabulous.
And now the news,
and it's great news,
ladies and gentlemen.
It's news to warm
the hearts of nations.
Jeremy Clarkson has lost his voice.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Mate, I'm sorry. I know!
Imagine how we feel!
They're gutted, mate.
They're gutted.
But the good news is that means
we can talk about whatever we
like and say what we like.
So, let's...
LAUGHTER
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
Let's get on with the news. I
thought we'd start this week
with talking about this
magazine called Heat.
Ooh, yeah?
LAUGHTER
Every year, they do a survey in
which they ask the whole world
to tell them their sort of
weirdest crush,
their strangest, freakiest,
oddest, most embarrassing,
ridiculous person to fancy.
And, well, do you wanna guess?
He's won it, ladies and gentlemen!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Here he is! Look at that!
Yeah! "Number one weird crush."
And the other thing, ladies and
gentlemen, in the same magazine...
This is actually quite poetic,
in the romance.
He's in the same magazine as his
boyfriend, look! Aw! Will Young.
And he loves him so much.
Jeremy, I'm really pleased that
you should share magazine space
with Will Young, your boyfriend.
You know what he did the other
day, when he still had his voice?
He came into the office and went,
"Have you heard Will's new single?
It's fantastic!" He loves it.
"Will"! He went on about it all the
time. "I love Bill's new song."
He does.
Can I just say... Oh, it speaks!
Or sort of squeaks.
Yeah, no... That's just a noise.
Are you deflating? What's that?
Synthetic saliva?!
It means that I have
just a few minutes of speaking. Oh!
So you need more saliva?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've
no doubt we can oblige with that.
LAUGHTER
How do you know it's synthetic
and isn't just some bloke's...?
LAUGHTER
Gobbing...
HE MIMICS SPITTING
Bottle it.
You can shut up for a
kick-off as well.
What is that noise you're making?
Have you seen his eye?
He's got the biggest eye
infection I've ever seen!
At least I don't look like a
mutant!
Has it come to this?
I'm working with these two.
This isn't a television
programme any more. It's a colony!
LAUGHTER
I tell you what, instead of
hurling abuse at each other, why...
Excuse me. Why don't we do the
news?
Yes, let's do the news.
Good news, OK?
We haven't been asked to do
the commentary on the Formula One
coverage on the BBC next year.
No, it's good news.
What they've got, they've brought
Martin Brundle over from ITV.
That's fantastic. We'll be able
to watch the slow march of
his trousers up his stomach.
LAUGHTER
They've got Eddie Jordan.
He's gonna be a pundit. That's
fantastic. Eddie's a great guy.
David Coulthard is the other
pundit, and that worries me.
I think that means that on
lap two of every race your
telly will suddenly go off.
Or it'll just fall off the stand
for no reason.
"Why have you done that?"
Apparently, they've got Murray
Walker involved. They have. Murray
Walker's coming back to the BBC.
He is. Yeah.
AUDIENCE CHEERS
Bless him. It is good news.
Did you know, though, he's 84?
He'll be at Silverstone going, "It
were all trees when I were a lad."
Ferrari's pulled in
with their first pit stop.
Let's go to Murray Walker.
"Can someone change me bag?
It's full again."
commentating
on F1, that's pretty cool.
You won't be commentating on
anything. Look! I've just thought.
I wanna move it on. You know the
Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson?
She recently sold her Jaguar.
It has ended up in the hands of -
it was in the papers this week -
hands of a cabbie.
Steve Coulson, 31,
of the north somewhere.
He's gone to the papers
because he found that she's left
all the addresses she's been to
in the sat nav,
still programmed into the system.
He is saying,
"What if I'd been a terrorist?
"This car is a suicide
bomber's dream."
Now one of the addresses in there,
Windsor Castle.
Another, Buckingham Palace.
LAUGHTER
I think some people know
where those things are already.
No, don't laugh, this is a
national security nightmare, it is.
And also, he has inadvertently made-
himself the world's most hunted man.
I'm presuming he's looked at this
sat nav and seen the addresses.
He knows where Windsor Castle is.
Every terrorist organisation in
the world is going to be after him
for his lethal secret knowledge.
LAUGHTER
I think there's only one decent
course of action here. What?
Assuming he has destroyed it,
that's fine. He has read it,
therefore he must kill himself
and take his knowledge to the grave.
Now, there's a new Mini convertible.
It's got better engines,
bigger boot.
But the thing that caught my eye is-
it's fitted with something called
an "openometer".
I'm not making this up.
An openometer tells you
how much you
have driven it with the roof off.
Well, what's the point in that?
Why not have a dial that
tells you how many times you've
driven through Leicester?
Why would you want to know what you-
drove with the roof up,
and what you drove with the
roof down? It makes no sense.
Do you remember the early Corvettes,
they had a little dial that showed
you how many revs the engine had
done. Revs? Revs, yeah.
What, going around at 5,000 rpm?
It would be wider than the car
just to get the dial in.
I worked it out from
my old Porsche actually. Your what?
My old Porsche is 25 years old.
8.4 times 10 to the eight revs.
You worked that out...
LAUGHTER
..for your car? You've spent time...
Wow, so you must actually have done-
everything there is to do
in the whole world
to get to the bottom of the list
of everything a human being can do.
What's it like on the top of
Everest? It's all right.
Richard, I went to
a dinner party the other day.
I was sat next to a girl who said
she couldn't believe James May
was still single.
There's your answer!
There's your answer!
Anyway, look, tough times
for carmakers, as we know.
They're all in really, really
deep...
Oh, dear, I've arrived at a point
where I can't say the word
I need to say - deep mess.
They've resorted to offering
incredibly long test drives
to people just to
get them into the showrooms.
Lexus will lend you a car
for 48 hours - two days.
BMW say you can go in one
of their cars for 100 miles.
Peugeot, 24 hours. Peugeot? Peugeot.
Are they surprised when people
bring it back after 24 minutes?
That's enough of that!
Now the reporter who uncovered
this story, he said he went to a
Peugeot dealership to try a 207.
And the salesman said,
"I can go one better than that, sir.
"I can lend you a 4007."
That's not ONE better, is it?
That's 3,800 better he went,
just to try and get a sale.
One better than a 207 is...
work it out. It's...
it's herpes. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Think about this logically.
How many people here drove to the
studio today?
Everybody? In my Peugeot.
Brilliant car. Best in the world.
What's a brilliant car?
Peugeot 406 with a six-player CD.
Best car in the world.
That's you told!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He's making a fine case for it.
He thinks the Peugeot 406,
with a six-player CD,
is the best car in the world.
Not an Enzo, as it turns out.
We've been wasting our time.
I'm glad you brought that up,
because I'm going to
skip on down, if I may.
The number of lunatics in Britain
has been halved.
I know there's some evidence to
suggest that they're out and in
the countryside and among us.
But I have arrived at
this conclusion
by a simple and alarming fact
that came across my desk
only this morning.
Electric car sales are down by half.
That must mean that loonies
are fewer and far between.
Really, I genuinely
congratulate you for your bravery.
It seems these days that absolutely
everything you buy is made in China.
Chopsticks,
Ming vases, mah jong sets...
Dogs. Exactly.
Some people are saying that
soon we will be buying cars
made in the People's Republic.
Thing is, though,
China is a Communist country.
And that got James and me wondering.
Communism - has it ever produced
a good car?
We thought it would ironic to
film our hunt here
at the Greenham Common airbase,
home in the 1980s
to 96 US Air Force missiles
and several hundred lesbians.
Today they're all gone,
and in their place we find this.
It's a Lada Riva, which started
out in life as a Fiat 124,
one of the most advanced
sports saloons of the period.
But the Russians made a few changes-
to the original design.
They replaced the excellent disc
brakes with drums, which were worse.
They fitted a starting handle,
a manual fuel pump,
and they made the body
from much, much thicker steel.
As I shall now demonstrate...
..with my hammer. Ready?
It's nuclear.
The heaviest part of the car,
though, was not the nuclear
bunker bodywork.
It was the steering.
I actually believe
it's set in concrete.
In fact, the only good thing
about this car is that
you could drive it in a hat.
Let me give you
an example of its terribleness.
The rear brakes were
made from aluminium.
They must have thought,
"Aha, that's very advanced!
"The West hasn't thought of this."
There's a very good
reason for that though.
Aluminium has the same braking
properties, really, as...cheese.
TYRES SCREECH
Despite all these things,
the Riva is still being built today-
under licence in Egypt.
Imagine that,
a 40-year-old Italian design,
improved by the Russians and
now built by a bunch of Egyptians.
I can't think of
anything worse than that!
Well, I can.
You see, the Lada was not the only
car to come from the Soviet Union.
There were hundreds of
the damn things -
GAZes, VAZes,
ZILs, ISHes, ZAZes...
..and this, the Moskvitch 408.
Now this car was originally launched-
at the 1964 British
Earl's Court Motor Show.
And it was Communism's response
to our very own people's car,
the Mark I Cortina.
And as you'd expect, the Moskvitch
was very cheap. Just £679.
The Cortina was a whole pound
more expensive.
The gearbox is sloppy,
the suspension is bouncy,
the steering is very heavy
and yet very vague.
And just listen to the noise
when you hit 40?
ENGINE SHUDDERS
Interestingly, this particular one
was built in the factory
where they also made
the AK47 rifle.
The difference is,
this is much more lethal.
So, whose car was the most wretched?
That is simply the worst car in
the world. Even worse than this.
Disagree.
Have you seen the pedals in this?
Look where the accelerator pedal is-
in relation to the other two.
Thought so. A rev counter. Yes?
You decadent, capitalist pig!
Ownership of a rev counter is theft.
This is the colour
of a prosthetic limb.
You've got wipers on your headlights.
They don't work! Not the point.
It's aspirational.
Rear suspension made out of cart
springs. What have you got on yours?-
Coils. Exactly.
Elitist! The coils, James,
are from a Bulgarian's biro.
We decided to settle our argument
by finding out which was
the slowest
in a quarter-mile drag race.
And, to spice it up, we would be
racing against a Western car
from the time,
a Ford Cortina 1600 E, and a dog.
Fast as you can. Don't cheat.
Why would I need to cheat?
Er... Launch control?
No, doesn't have that. Er...
Clearly,
the Commie cars would be a while.
So let's move on - to this...
..the Zzzgggz 968.
Maybe this could save the day
for Socialism.
Oh, my God, there's no key!
ENGINE STARTS
Yeah!
Interestingly it was
rear-engined, so it was exactly
the same as a Porsche 911...
..except for one thing.
Look at this. Under the carpet in
here, the passenger foot-well,
there's a little flap.
You open it and there's a hole.
The idea is that you park your car
on a frozen lake,
cut a hole in the ice,
drop your fishing line
through the hole, plug in your
interior lamp, like that.
Then you hang that up,
and you can sit back and
do an evening's fishing.
Not even a Maybach has this!
Better still, the Zappo 968
was available with a choice of
trim levels.
Unusual in a single party state.
This is the standard 968, OK? Yes.
What do you suppose the 968 B2 was?
It was an estate version. No.
It was for people who had
the use of only one foot. Ah!
968 B?
That's the least of its problems.
968 B? Twin carb?
No. For people who didn't
have the use of either foot.
968 A?
People with...
..one foot and two hands but
one of them is frozen?
No. That was the one
with the 0.7 litre engine. Wow!
Now, if you're name begins with
"Ar" and ends with "thur Scargill",
you might claim we're wrong to blame-
Communism for all these
truly terrible cars.
You might say that it's just
a Russian problem,
Well, Mr Scargill, a quick canter
through some other Eastern Bloc
cars will prove you wrong.
Take this, the Wartburg,
from East Germany.
When they made a rally version
of this,
they had to fit uprated brakes,
which they got from an Austin Maxi.
How bad do the standard brakes have-
to be for a Maxi's to be better?
And then there was the equally
East German Trabant,
which was made from,
and I'm not making this up...cotton.
Mr Khrushchev once said,
"We will bury you."
What with? This?
It's actually made from leather.
I think it looks like
somebody's crashed a motorcycle
into the back of a cow.
And then from Poland
there's the FSO pick-up truck.
And, of course, we know
a thing or two on Top Gear
about how to test such things.
This free world Toyota, for example.
We dropped it from
a 23-storey tower block.
And it worked afterwards.
So, surely the rugged FSO,
from the world's best plumbers,
could survive this?
'It didn't.'
Maybe we should try dropping
it from a slightly lower height?
It's a bit late now, isn't it?
NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS
Finally, from Britain,
there was the Morris Marina.
The unpleasant log laid by British
Leyland after Communism crept,
like a Nietzsche red blanket,
over the shop floor.
God almighty. God almighty!
Britain made this.
They have the effrontery,
the bare-faced cheek,
to call this super?
I suppose
you weren't actually allowed back
then to call it Trotskyite crap.
Maybe that's what the
TC version stood for.
Still, having it here enables us
to answer an important question.
You see, the Cold War ended before
we ever got the chance to find out
who would have won
if we'd actually started fighting.
Yeah, but now we can
find out with a race.
We have all the ingredients here.
It's cold,
the track is much too narrow,
it's too pockmarked, it's bumpy.
I shall be driving the Morris
Marxist and you shall be in the...
What is it? The Lenin 1.6 SLX.
Lovely. And the winner gets Berlin.
And the loser
has to sacrifice his bath plug.
Now we'll see, Mr Clarkson.
Oi!
Welcome to the inaugural round of
the BTCC, The British Touring
Communism Championships.
Welcome to the inaugural round of
the BTCC, The British Touring
Communism Championships.
I can get him on the inside. Yes!
Oh, no, he's coming
through but he has an 86 brake
horse power - I've only got 83.
May! Marvellous.
Russian communism is better
than British communism.
How do you like that?
Come on, get out of my way!
This thing is impossible to steer.
Whoa! I've missed the track.
I'll take him here.
Get off!
No, May, no. I'm back in the lead.
The handling is simply diabolical.
There's no other word for it.
Yes, the Polaris is way
in the lead here.
Gaining. Gaining. No, wait!
The SS18 is coming through.
BUMP
He's hit me. He's hit me.
There's nothing I can do.
Ha! That will annoy him.
There's some catching up
to be done now!
Come on, Marina!
There he is, he's in my sights.
'The Marina caught the Lada
quite quickly,
'which means we would have won the
Cold War if we'd started fighting.'
Yes, what you think of this?!
Argh! Goodbye, Mr May.
Oh, dear.
I seem to have accidentally
killed James May there.
Anyway... The miracle is not
that the Marina won that, it's that-
it was built in the first place.
In Russia, you had to work hard in
the car factories or you'd suddenly
discover how difficult it is to
mine Siberian salt while wearing
a hat made from your wife's head.
British Communists didn't really
bother with any of that.
Mostly, in fact, they didn't
bother turning up for work at all.
They'd simply get to the factory
gates where they'd spent the rest
of the day chatting and huddling
for warmth round a burning dustbin.
It does work well as a brazier.
But that's what they were best
at because they spent
more time with braziers than
they did making cars. It's true.
So far, we've established that
Communistical cars were not fast,
pretty, well engineered,
cheap or reliable.
But while all animals were equal,
some were more equal than others.
This is a GAZ Chaika. They made
just 144 of these every year,
and not one of them ever made
it in the hands of the proletariat.
These were for high-ranking
officials.
Well, ha, you know the KGB
used these?
Except theirs had
more powerful engines.
You should see the amount
of space back here.
You could chop up 30 dissidents
in the back of here.
'But despite all these plus points,
the Chaika isn't a good car.'
LOUD CLUNK
Was that a gear change? It was.
Is there a man in the gearbox
with a sledgehammer?
That's what it feels like.
That's unbelievable.
How is the steering - precise?
Yeah... No.
Don't do that. I'm doing 20mph.
How can I shoot you
if I can't sit still?
Top speed? 99mph.
So it can't even do 100? No.
With a 5.5 litre V8?! Quite.
I suspect this is as far
as we go, Mr Clarkson.
You're going to have to turn
it round. That's going to take
the rest of our lives. Oh, BEEP!
It's disappeared into
the bloody dashboard!
THEY LAUGH
I'm going to grab this camera
so you can actually see
what has happened here.
These are the buttons
that change the gears.
That's park, that's backwards
and that was forwards.
I promise you, I merely pressed it
and my finger just...
THEY LAUGH
'So they couldn't make
a decent luxury car either.
'But one about the other end of
the scale? Rugged simplicity.
'Surely this is good
Commie territory.'
It does seem to have been built
on relatively sensible principles.
It does seem to have been built
on relatively sensible principles.
Add weight and simplify.
'What's more, it had coiled springs
'- not the RSJs
you got in Land Rovers
'of the time - so it
was surprisingly comfortable.'
I once drove one of these down
a very heavily rutted track
at 50mph
and I was able to use
the cigarette lighter
because it was so smooth to light
a cigarette. It was that smooth.
I'd actually quite like to
demonstrate that for you now
but, unfortunately,
we don't live in a free country.
'We ploughed on through the field
and things looked promising.'
'But then...'
Oh, give up. We are in Berkshire
and it's been completely defeated.
If this comes out, I can stand
up like Rommel and guide you.
Argh!
We don't need that. Right.
Forwards, slowly.
Argh, no, no, no, no!
'In the end, we were pulled free by-
a decadent capitalist Land Rover.
'But we were reluctant to give up
on our little Niva.'
And it is quite a rugged,
personable little thing.
It is, actually. It is. It's the
sort of car you can give it a name.
It's got one - Niva.
Do you think we've actually found
the Communist car that we like?
No!
THEY LAUGH
Shall we get the train?
Simple message.
Don't buy a Chinese car until China-
renounces Communisticalness.
You pair of idiots.
Did it, what - slip your mind?
These three cars - Maserati,
Lamborghini, Ferrari.
All three built within 30 miles
of the Italian city Bologna which,
for 50 years and until nine
years ago, was run by
the Italian Communist Party.
Which means that actual Ferrari
was built by Communists.
I'm glad he brought that up
because London used to be
a communist city but now,
thanks to my guest,
it isn't any more.
Ladies and gentlemen, please...
You do this, my voice...
Go, quickly!
Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson!
How are you? Very well. Have a seat.
Thank you, Jeremy.
What's this? Is that for me?
It's my urine sample.
I'm very startled. What's that?
How can you be a journalist
and politician and still be loved?
Most people still love Boris!
I resent... I think I'd resist
your analysis there.
What you find is that people
are far from loving - shout all
sorts of hostile things. Who shouts
I was watching your programme
and someone was saying
I was a faffing around in trying
to remove the bendy buses.
Let's get straight... Yeah,
let's get straight to it.
How long have you been mayor
of London for? Eight months.
You said before you were mayor,
"I will get rid of the bendy
buses."
And I will. This Friday...
Burn them.
..I am told that we are
announcing the removal of
the bendy bus from
three routes, 80 buses.
You are talking
but I'm hearing music!
When's this happening?
They will be off by 2010.
For God's sake!
You are a very hard man to please.
A very hard man!
Anybody would think you were some
kind of crazed petrolhead.
LAUGHTER
I'm looking at what you've done,
or your initiatives, since you came
in here and it is extraordinary how-
I disagree with almost all of them.
LAUGHTER
Like not drinking on the tube.
I'm 48 years old and if I want
a refreshing pint on the tube...
A 44-year-old man can't tell me
not to. Well, listen...
Am I allowed to have a drink on the-
tube? No, you're not. Here's why.
There are people who drink on
the tube with a six packs of beer
who loll around swearing
and cursing who offer aggression
towards their fellow passengers.
And I think that removing that
possibility actually makes
the tube friendlier.
Although I have to admit, it was
rather wonderful that thousands
of people had a party,
hurling execration at my name...
Over that? Over that. It took
Margaret Thatcher ten years
to achieve that level
of unpopularity with
the youth of society.
I thought it was quite something
to have pulled it off
after only six weeks.
You are going to allow motorcycles
to travel in bus lanes.
From January there is going
to be a trial.
Because I think it would smooth,
smooth traffic flow,
provided those motorcyclists
remember that
they can't terrify vulnerable
road users such as cyclists.
What about bus drivers?
You cycle, have you not been
attacked by a bus driver?
You don't cycle?
No. Because I have a car.
Talk to the little one...
Hammond? Yes!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He...
He knows what he's talking about.
I remember watching your show
where he beat you hollow around
London on his bike.
You were going by speedboat,
he was far quicker than you.
He will confirm that bus drivers
are, in fact, extremely considerate.
What he actually says is they
are a load of murdering BEEP!
I speak from experience.
They look at their mirrors,
they know where you are
and by comparison with HGV drivers,-
they are extremely good.
No, I won't have that.
MUTTERING IN CROWD
Who thinks lorry drivers...
I'm a big fan of lorry drivers...
Well, I...!
Who thinks lorry drivers
are better than bus drivers?
Before I needlessly throw away the
lorry driver vote... You just have!
I just want to say
that they are not all bad...
LAUGHTER
But they need to look in their
mirrors. Let's move it on.
If I may.
You were the motoring
correspondent of GQ magazine.
Yes. Do you know...
Where's this going?
Do you know how much you
built up in parking tickets
on those cars that you tested?
I can tell you something, I jolly
well paid them because... Now.
Your publisher argues with that.
LAUGHTER
There were two phases
in our relationship.
There was the phase where they paid-
for the parking tickets and...
Do you know how much the phase
cost them
when they were paying for them? No.-
£4,500.
CROWD GROANS
So they may claim now!
While we're on the subject of this,-
there's a photograph -
we brought this up on
the programme a few weeks ago -
this is a message from you on
the back of one of the lovely buses.
Changing gears at lower revs
reduces your C02 emissions
and saves you money.
Very good. You've put that up.
Absolutely right.
Let me draw your attention to
something you wrote in GQ magazine.
"The essence of it is, in my view,
not to change up until you
hit about 6,000rpm."
In the case of the Ferrari 430...
LAUGHTER
..which I was...
I admit I was driving.
It may very well be that that
was the cleanest, greenest,
most fuel-efficient way...
of changing gear!
On your very track the other day,
I was introduced to this wonderful
electric car by the proprietor
of this Dunsfold track. Yes.
And we've all got to go electric.
1p a mile. Where does
the power come from, Boris?
It comes from the plug.
In fact, I'll tell you something...
LAUGHTER
You...
..I make this prophecy,
Jeremy, that
the gear is going to be obsolete
and your programme will have
to change its name to Top Plug.
Can I just talk about the Olympics?
I know this is off topic.
We are going to make
a mess of it, aren't we?
No. It's going to be fantastic.
We're going to ruin it. No.
We're going to do it brilliantly
but in our own particular,
ingenious...British way.
LAUGHTER
I just have this vision
of the opening ceremony
and there'll be one council house
in the middle of it and
a bloke going, "I'm not moving!"
You know in Beijing when it closed,
you were there of course,
the British...
handing over ceremony, there was
a bus and a girl from the X Factor.
People would have thought,
"Great country."
Instead of going,
"That looks like BEEP."
People loved it with that thing
with Beckham kicking a football.
No, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin,
I'm very fond of that.
But Jimmy Page standing out
the back of a burning Jaguar,
power-sliding round.
Fantastic. Perhaps we should
commission some of your ideas for
the opening ceremony.
Let's do that, can we do that?!
I'll ring Jimmy Page immediately.
APPLAUSE
The lap was, pouring with rain. It
didn't go quite as smoothly as
perhaps you'd hoped.
Most people, as you know, spin off
on the second to last corner.
Boris decided he was going to
spin of on every single corner.
LAUGHTER
Who'd like to see Boris's
practices?
AUDIENCE: Yes!
Shall we have a look at some?
Second to last corner, there's the
traditional spot for going off.
Here we are on the final corner...
Here we go again.
Here we are on the actual
pass the tyres was there.
The problem is,
Boris, you can't turn left.
Wait - you go right here and...
First person ever to go off on the
follow-through.
Well done, Boris.
The atmospheric conditions
were challenging.
It was your fault.
If you believe that cars cause
global warming, get a Range
Rover and it will warm it up.
Anyway, you did eventually
complete a lap.
Who'd like to see that?
AUDIENCE: Yes!
Let's have a look at Boris's
lap here. It really is wet,
isn't it?
There's a determined-looking man
behind the wheel there.
That's soaking wet.
Trinny and Susannah wet.
Looking smooth.
HE MUMBLES
Talking in Greek.
HE MUMBLES
More funny noises.
And into the hammer head.
you are in the lines or not.
Yes, no, actually, well done.
Sounding patronising, I apologise.
This is good coming out.
No, hit the rev limit.
Happy, were we, with our gear
change?
That's lovely. Watch out for
the rubber tyres. The rubber tyres.-
Yes, missed those. Come on, Boris.
You've slowed.
Come on, faster, faster.
It's a gamble.
A bit wide but well held. There we
are, across the line.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
To be brutally honest,
in conditions such as those
you aren't really realistically...
Keith Allen would be our fastest
very wet lap on 1.51.
There is no point hoping for that.
No. I've no idea how fast it was.
Did it feel...
I thought it was pretty good.
Pretty sluggish. You think so? Yeah.
You did it in 1...
Which in itself in conditions
like that... I like that word.
Would you like to stop
the interview there. Yeah.
Good idea, because the
next bit is a 50... 57.4.
Which puts you... And give him
a round of applause...
I'm off the bottom. Now I look
at it, it's catastrophically bad.
LAUGHTER
There's no other word. It's the
slowest very wet. No, it's the same-
as Fiona Bruce. I feel proud.
Very proud, and it's been
marvellous having you here, Boris.
Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Every week on Top Gear we get
a stack of letters. But this week,
one in particular caught our eye.
It's from a Mr Needham and it says,-
"Why do not test cars properly any
more, have you forgotten how?"
This really hurt us so we decided
to take the new Ford Fiesta and do
a proper road test, like they used
to do on Top Gear in the old days.
We were quite looking forward to it-
but at the very last minute, Jeremy-
came in and said he wanted to do it.
Right. There's the car in
question, the new Fiesta.
What I thought I'd do is break
the road test down into segments.
Hopefully, cover all the bases.
Behind the extremely pretty body,
I'm sorry to report there are
one or two small problems.
The back seats, for
instance, do not fold flat.
Other cars in this price range
do have bigger boots.
However, despite this, there
is still room in the boot
for a zebra's head.
Pop the neck in first.
There we are. So if you're
a sort of Mafia game ranger,
that goes very nicely.
Then, in the back seat, there's
room for the traditional
2.2 children.
I should say so. This new car maybe-
the biggest Fiesta yet,
but it's a whopping 40 kilograms
lighter than the last model.
That'll help at the pumps.
There's even a 1.6 litre diesel
model called the Econetic,
which produces such a small amount
of carbon dioxide you pay
no road tax on it at all.
I wouldn't bother with that
particular model though, because
it'll almost certainly be sh...
Ever since the Ford Focus came
along in 1998, or whenever it was,
all Fords have had a driving feel
that you just don't get in other
cars of the same size or price.
This is no different.
Here, as I go through the
hammerhead, for example,
I can feel that it has a sort of
Volkswagen feel of solidity
and a Lotus feel of sportiness.
Rare to get that combination.
The steering has a linear response,-
understeer well taken,
no tread shuffle.
It feels fabulous.
And if you go for the 1.6 litre
TV CT engine that I have in this
test car, it's pretty fast as well.
Certainly, it will
easily do 70mph,
which is what I'm doing now.
That's the maximum speed that you
can go in Britain, so that's good.
Is this thorough enough for you,
Mr Needham? I hope so because
it's going well.
Hopefully not. Apart from the
fact it's made by Germans, most of
the equipment on this car has been
fitted to other Fords for years
and we've heard no horror stories.
There's an entry-level version,
which has no equipment on it at all-
so there's nothing to go wrong.
Do you want that one, though -
really, honestly, a basic model?
I bet that's also sh...
Of course it's easy to park. It's
got windows, a steering wheel.
There we are.
Next.
This can happen.
Oh, and it just has. Here we go!
Good grip. Power...
I am now
breaking the speed limit indoors.
He's right on my tail.
This is where
front-wheel-drive comes in.
Round the palm-tree, there we go.
He's taken out Costa Coffee.
The baddie has made the
classic baddie error.
He's got too much power.
I've got 120 horsepower in this.
You don't want any more
than that on marble.
The bears.
The handbrake.
Does he have to hit
absolutely everything?
Steering is light,
turning circle is good.
I was once chased through
a shopping centre
in Putney, actually, by baddies.
I had an original Mini and, I
must say, that was very good.
Just cut through
British Home Stores.
Dab on the handbrake
and there we go.
Mmm...
The Corvette is stuck
in British Home Stores. Turning
circle, not good enough.
I'm getting away.
Instruments are superb,
really sharp.
Handbrake!
TYRES SCREECH
The headlamps are brilliant.
Excellent range on full beam.
Look at him.
Look at him! He'll never follow me
if I go through here.
Oh, he is doing!
The upshot is that
after half-an-hour,
I got out of the shopping centre
and the 'Vette didn't.
Yes... Very.
Well, prices start at around £8,500-
but you need £11,000 to get
a decent mid-range model.
So if you have £11,000 to spend
on a car then, yes, you can.
But if you've only got 40p then,
The upshot is that
after half an hour,
I got out of the shopping centre
and the 'Vette didn't.
Yes. Very.
Well, prices start at around £8,500,
but you need £11,000 to get
a decent mid-range model.
So if you have £11,000 to spend
on a car, then yes, you can.
But if you've only got 40p,
then no, you can't.
Although it is quite large for
a supermini, very large, in fact,
it still fits
on the marines' LCV Mark 5
landing craft with room to spare.
Now, if you'll forgive me,
we are approaching the beach.
The gunfire has started.
Lads, do you want to mount up?
HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR
GUNFIRE
That gunfire can be
quite loud, can't it?
If you get that door shut...
You can barely hear it now.
GUNFIRE
Look at that! The smoke grenades
fit perfectly in the cup holders.
How much ammo can you get
in the glove box? Just two mags?
The windscreen is heated,
but not bullet-proof.
Stand by the beach!
You cold? Yeah, I am, actually.
HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
Let's go! Come on!
Come on, Fiesta!
That's a lot deeper than I thought!
Look at this
for a beach assault craft!
You've got a bit
of water coming in there.
Come on! Are we there yet?
You kids are being annoying.
Shoot them!
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
Where am I going, boys?
Do you want to shoot from in here?
Would that be more comfortable?
It's got electric windows.
I'll just put...
GUNFIRE
Go, go, go! Shoot the enemy
in the middle of its face!
Carry on, there's a plucky chap!
Well done.
These carpets are excellent.
No evidence at all
of the marines' muddy boots.
So, there you are, Mr Needham.
The most thorough test of a car ever
undertaken on British television.
The Fiesta's come through
with flying colours.
Drive safely.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Absolutely thorough. Well done.
Foot on the bonnet
at the end, traditional.
Jumper...all of it.
Anyway, that's all we've got
time for this week.
Next week, for reasons we don't
understand, we're on at 9pm.
We'll see you then, unless you're
watching this on Dave. In February.
in the middle of the afternoon.
In which case, we hope
you get a job soon.
Take care. See you soon. Bye.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd