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If Jeremy Clarkson really was PM. . .
The Top Gear team aims to solve delays by adding speed, writes Angus Frazer
For full coverage of MPH click here
At last year’s MPH, Jeremy Clarkson raced a Land Rover Discovery up a huge, boulder-strewn, man-made mountain and the Stig, mounted in a Rage buggy, fought a pitched battle with a fire-breathing dragon. This year’s live show promises to be even more outlandish – because MPH will play host to the first Top Gear Live event.
The plan is for the Top Gear team to travel the world putting on live versions
of the BBC show – and this will be its debut outing. So what can the
audiences at Earls Court and the NEC expect to see?
“Well,” says Rowland French, the executive producer of Top Gear Live,
“there’ll be a black cab and a red London Routemaster bus.”
A cab? And a double-decker bus? Hardly the stuff a petrolhead’s dreams are made of. French begins to explain further but a huge roar drowns his words. Something very powerful and very fast has just woken up the Birmingham NEC hall we’re standing in.
I turn around half-expecting to see a rally car charging towards us. Sure
enough, all four wheels slide in an ear-splitting scream, and pungent smoke
pours from every wheelarch. But this is no rally car. It’s a London black
cab – complete with its yellow passenger light glowing for a fare amid the
heavy smoke.
“There’s a Mitsubishi Evo IX underneath there,” says French casually as the
taxi screeches to a halt. “And that’s got a spaceframe chassis and a 400bhp
V8 [Chevrolet] Corvette engine,” he adds, as a two-thirds scale London
open-top double-decker bus bellows into the hall, sliding sideways even more
than the taxi.
These two vehicles will be the stars of what French describes as the “Doughnut London” section of Top Gear Live, performing with a cast featuring traffic wardens and hoodies against an urban backdrop complete with the Big Ben clock tower. “It all came out of a Downing Street petition to make Jeremy Clarkson prime minister,” French says. “We started to wonder what the UK, and London specifically, would look like if Top Gear ran it. We’d want to move people around quickly, so we decided to speed up a London black cab and a Routemaster bus, and here are the results.”
Even though it’s scaled down, you can still go upstairs and sit on the open deck of the bus, but the back of the cab seems a safer bet. Along with standard taxi features, it’s got a full roll cage and four-point harnesses for the passengers. Up front, the racing-driver-turned-cabbie Ben Collins grins, flicks off the fare light and guns the Evo IX’s engine. “If you feel sick or want to stop, just reach out and tap the glass,” he advises.
And then we’re off. The Evo cab snaps forward as all four tyres scrabble for grip. Second gear and the acceleration is still building when suddenly we’re travelling back in the direction we just came and Collins didn’t use the taxi’s famed tight turning circle to achieve it, just a quick flick of the handbrake.
The cab slides sideways past a pillar with inches to spare. I strain forward just to see if I can tap the glass, but no chance, the G-force is too great. With no internal speaker system fitted, I’m hoping he can’t hear my expletives. Five minutes later – after a final round of stomach-churning doughnuts – we come to a halt, the only apparent damage a dislodged rear light.
“I’ve never whacked a car yet,” says Collins, the veteran of numerous Top Gear stage shows. “I’ve shaved a couple, mind you. Driving in the event is a bit like racing on a street circuit and the trouble is the wall starts to become attractive because it defines the limit. It’s just human nature to want to go deeper and deeper until you rub the wall. But that’s not good if you are in a Ferrari 360.”
Inch-perfect precision is essential. “You’ve got to get it absolutely right, especially if there is someone standing in front of you and you are doing doughnuts around their feet,” Collins explains.
That’s why he and Paul Swift, a fellow stunt driver, and their respective teams, will practise for days on end. A band of former Subaru and Mitsubishi World Rally Championship mechanics will travel with the show ensuring all the vehicles remain in fine fettle.
Top Gear’s presenters, Clarkson, Hammond and May, will also be executing their
famous engineering skills. “They’ll get their own stuff to play with,”
French says. “This year it’ll be all about speeding up the things that slow
us down on the road, like tractors, caravans and horseboxes. So Jeremy,
Richard and James will be given the challenge to take one of those things
each and speed it up.
“It really will be just like attending a live version of Top Gear. We’ll have
the world’s biggest Cool Wall with 4,500 people voting and there’ll also be
an opportunity for the audience to control the Chevrolet Lacetti around the
TG test track and set a time: they’ll be able to turn it left and right,
accelerate and brake shouting their instructions.”
The Stig will do battle with an 26ft tall monster called Swampy that bursts out from inside a petrol tanker and Richard Hammond will pay tribute to his hero Evel Knievel. “Except,” French confides cryptically, “it won’t be on a big bike jumping helicopters or anything like that. It will be something a lot smaller, in terms of the bike, the jump and the things he’s jumping over, probably a lot smaller than Hammond thinks.”
Will any of the presenters get a go in the bus or the black cab? “I’d like to say not,” French confides, “but the chances of Jeremy walking past a Mitsubishi Evo that looks like a black cab and not wanting to have a go in it are slim. I just hope he keeps it away from any pillars.”
you say that.....but it'll be average speed cameras everywhere replacing them.
http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/speed/default.asp?storyId=18949
Jeremy's got my vote. Common sense!
Dave Roy, Bristol,
It's too late for Clarkson to be PM, the Speed cameras are being scrapped this time, for good!
HOORAY!
Rikita, Surbiton, England