I Love Television

Jeremy Eaton

As you may have already surmised, gasoline costs a lot of money. In
fact, it costs so much money, I’ve been forced to resort to
extreme measures in order to fill up the 100-gallon tank on my
5,000-pound, four-door, 1969 Buick Electra. Extreme measure #1: Cut
back on child-support payments. Extreme measure #2: Stop paying for
garbage service; throw garbage in the neighbor’s can. Extreme measure
#3: Borrow friend’s bicycle; sell friend’s bicycle. (Extremely earth
friendly! Not only will a noncyclist start riding, your friend will
have to buy a new bike to put on the road!) Extreme measure #4: Siphon
fuel from ocean gas tanker. (Nobody’s guarding those things. I
think.)

Oh sure, I could start “driving less”—but that would severely
cut into my “blowing the doors off of punk-ass bitches, and cutting
cookies in the grocery-store parking lot” time. Thankfully, there’s
one TV show that doesn’t give two poots about spiraling gas prices, the
British import Top Gear (BBC America, Mon 8 pm).

Though relatively unknown in the U.S., Top Gear is wildly
popular globally—garnering a whopping 385 million
viewers—and I can see why: The show is highly entertaining,
whether you’re a Maserati-driving prick or a schlub sitting next to a
sleeping drug addict on the bus.

In Top Gear, Limey personalities Jeremy Clarkson, Richard
Hammond, and James May spend an entire hour every week

fetishizing the crap out of automobiles. Filmed like a
Playboy photo spread, the cameras erotically glide over the
high-priced cars, as the hosts enthusiastically describe every sexy
curve and feature—and then demonstrate the auto’s power by
burning rubber around the track. Car porn? You bet your ass… but like
normal guys in a pub, they’re just as willing to hilariously and
honestly insult a car’s less attractive features.

But my favorite part of Top Gear involves the unusual way
they road test cars. For example, to test the handling of a Lotus
Exige, Clarkson frantically tried to avoid being targeted by an Apache
attack helicopter. To test toughness and maneuverability, the hosts put
together a team of Toyota Aygos to play soccer with a giant ball (which
turned out to be more of a demolition derby). Their competitiveness
even extends to buying old junkers, and vying to see which crap car is
“the best”: by applying the emergency brake on a very tall hill to see
if the car would stay (it didn’t), racing on a cobblestone road to test
if the doors would stay on (they didn’t), and donning scuba outfits
and filling the inside of the cars up with water to see if they’d still
be drivable (they weren’t). There was an episode where they
strapped a dead cow on the roof of a Camaro—but I’m not too sure
what they were testing. (Maybe the pine-tree deodorizer hanging from
the rearview mirror?)

So do yourself a favor and check out Top Gear—as having
fun with cars goes, it’s certainly cheaper than stealing gas from an
oil tanker, and being beaten to death by dock workers. I think.

steve@thestranger.com