MOTOR-BLOG from Coventry

We went out last night to a pub in Kings Heath, Birmingham to catch the 7 inch cinema - short films made by normal people on Super 8 cameras. Very good it was too, with some extremely funny films being shown. Our favourites - Sticks and Balls (I’ll never look at the game of Golf the same way again) and one about Stephen Hawkin’s cat - hilarous and very clever.

See http://www.7inch.org.uk/ for more… 

On the way back home we got caught up in some crazy Too Fast Too Furious road racing action on the A45. Think Scoobys, Mitsubishi’s, Skylines, hissing dump valves and all that Jazz. It’s completely irresponsible of course to hold illegal street racing, but it was kinda fun - especially as they were all filming themselves. While this is outrageously dangerous to do, car nuts have been doing it for years.

Think Hot Rodders in the Forties and Fifties and you’ll get the drift (did you see what I did there? Drift? Geddit?) We tried to keep up from the lights, but the Ford KA we occupied was somewhat lacking in horsepower. One of our fellow civilian drivers at the lights was a lad in a BMW M3 (lookalike). He seemed to take umbridge at this blatant show of Japanese four wheel drive power (I estimate there to be around fifteen racers in the group).

Foolishly, he decided to join in. Of course, the Evo’s, Impreza WRC’s and Skyline’s all left him for dead, which was extremely satisfying to watch - he looked quite sheepish at the next set of lights, the whiff of clutch smoke still hanging thick in the air…

Talking of Impreza’s, I’m sitting here watching my favourite motorsport on the telly - the rallying of course. What a noble, skillful sport, long left out in the wilderness for non-satellite TV equipted Luddites like me. While F1 gets all the limelight (and seemingly gets more repetitive year on year - although I’m starting to get back into it again) the rallying goes on getting better and better.

I always wanted to be a rally driver, and have had a little go (a rally training day bought for my 30th birthday) and was pleased to report that I was rubbish at it - if I’d been any good I’d have been so annoyed that I missed my calling. Armed with a Group N Scooby doo I proceded to visciously mow down a fine selection of cones - well I got one anyhow.

So what is the point of these ramblings? Well it’s the new Impreza. What a dull looking machine, and having seen the rally version - which looked like a Daewoo Lanos with a spoiler - I can honestly say I’ve not been this disappointed for a long time. I knew that the road car looked bland (no matter how good it may be to drive) but was expecting the rally versions to look a bit better at least. They don’t - well at least the production class cars don’t. I’ll have to wait to see what the WRC version looks like.

 

Photos from http://www.tommimakinen.net

In the meantime, let’s hope that Mitsubishi bring out a new Evo that looks like a stealth fighter to keep things interesting - it would be a terrible shame if Japanese performance cars got all boring looking on us wouldn’t it? I’m off now to watch Fifth Gear smash up another brand new Renault - Renault seem to give them cars all the time. Aren’t PR departments great….

Well it’s come around quickly again - another new series of Fifth gear. That’s two series on from the Tim Lovejoy stint at the helm, which was OK I guess, but not great. A lot of people I know (and from what I hear at work) haven’t got a lot of time for this programme, but I think that Fifth Gear are getting the mix about right.

Now that the ‘New style’ Top Gear is not as fresh as it once was (which it isn’t) and old Jezza Clarkson’s totally predictable ’stick with the same old bullshit’ is back with a vengence i.e. - old cars are crap, BL cars are rubbish, anything under 200bhp is worthless, old cars are owned by blokes with beards drinking real ale, etc. etc, etc ad nauseum, the old style magazine car review programme has actually become attractive again.

For a start, reviewing cars that people may want to buy is a good thing. The first programme in the series pitched the new Citroen 4×4 against an old 2cv bought for £800. The 4×4 won of course, but would have shed well over £800 in depreciation as soon as it had the first name on the log book. Well you do the maths, the 2cv wins in my book and will be worth more than that 4×4 thing in eight years time. While we’re on the subject - thank goodness for Jonny Smith.

At last a bloke who loves old cars and doesn’t look like Chris Goffey (bless you Chris) and here’s the thing, Jonny Smith comes into our office from time to time and he is a genuine bona fide car enthusiast plus a nice bloke to boot. Anyone who is spending large amounts of time (and no doubt money) building himself a V6 powered Allegro can’t be bad in my book.

Making fun of older cars and people who own them is simply lazy, lazy journalism (says the motoring journalist who has only been doing it for a few months i.e. me, so don’t take my word for it - nevertheless it is lazy…fact) so when a programme like Fifth Gear bucks this trend it buys itself some credibility. Lets face it, Top Gear is a very successful entertainment programme that just happens to have the odd car or two in it. Top Gear is now more about the presenters than the cars.

The formula goes like this: Make fun of James ‘Captain Slow’ May’s sense of direction/hair/clothes then make fun of Richard ‘the hampster’ Hammond’s teeth/height/daytime TV presenting. Then have Jeremy Clarkson driving really badly in a car that no-one could afford - driving said car on the track using no more skill than turn in, boot the throttle to spin the car. Then film the car going backwards out of control whilst still in a forward gear to a cacophany of tyre squeal and smoke. Then cut and edit later to make it look as if Clarkson is doing a great powerslide. Simple.

Throw in a smattering of phrases to describe the supercars featured - ‘epic’ is a popular one which seems to be used in every episode. Then buy something old, trot out a load of outdated, wholly inaccurate and mostly false twoddle, plus undo some bolts and loosen some handbrake cables so that the cars fall apart/don’t stop/breakdown for good measure. Drive to Slough, and then smash them up (preferably into a caravan or two) whilst awarding yourself points for doing so. No matter what the outcome, Clarkson MUST win. Finally, end the programme by uttering the line ‘..and on that bombshell…’ and there you go - the Top Gear formula for world domination. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Top Gear - for a start it’s a car related programme that my girlfriend and I can sit down and watch together, which makes a nice change, and the experience that the presenters have in motoring journalism is in no doubt. I like Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, they are a good team and the show is really put together well - it’s just that it’s getting a bit up it’s own arse for my liking, and becoming predictable. In fact the only thing that really surprised me was the treatment of the Peel P50 - quite refreshing that was, so perhaps there’s hope yet.

 If only Fifth Gear would stop trying to compete with it and doing it’s own half arsed stunts (with obviously very little budget) I’d be happy. Fifth Gear should forge it’s own path instead, becoming the very best and informative motoring magazine programme on the TV. There is room for both Top and Fifth Gear(s) to flourish , and in this time of everythings the fault of cars and we’re all gonna die because of them absolute bullshit which we are enduring at the moment, we might well be in for a TV car programme renaissance.

I for one hope so.