Be Excellent To Each Other

Watch here, Top Gear fans!

First episode was good overall, I thought. Downsides were the stunt man and the guests (as always).
I thought the first 20 minutes was a bit Clarkson-heavy, too - the others hardly got a word in.
The police cars were ace (as the challenges often are), especially when Clarkson's wheel tried to kill the other two, and it's about time someone with a voice actually told the truth about the Prius. And the Dave jokes were great

7/10, then - looking forward to the rest of them, as always.

Clarkson's attempted takedown had me crying with laughter for several minutes. As Family Guy did later, on BBC3.

Fucking JLC can fuck to fucking fuck. His "comedy" partner moreso, the high-pitched twatter. GRRRR.

Other than that, aces.

I have no idea who they were, and I surely don't want to find out now.

The first half made me keep muttering to myself that maybe Top Gear has jumped the shark.

But the police cars saved it at the end. Twas awesome.

Yes, and now it appears JLC has the same car as me, I will now have to sell mine. The fucking fuck.

What does he/you have?

New-shape Civic. Yes, with the triangular exhausts.

TRIANGOOLAR EXHAUSTS!!!!11!!!

The Prius thing was something of a nonsense though. In normal road driving it'd kill the M3 economy wise.

Of course it would itself get a good kicking economywise from the Corsa diesel, which is half the price, has a better load capacity, is quicker both to 60 and top speed and doesn't come with 50 years worth of battery leakage pollution.

No, it was perfectly correct - it's not what you drive, it's how you drive it.

No, no it wouldn't. The Prius is only good at very low speed.

In London that IS normal road driving.

As an alterantive, you could rag the shit out of an ER5 returning M3 performance with greater than Proius economy on a day to day basis.

Only to a point. But a Range Rover is never going to have as good a fuel economy as, say, a Polo, however you drive it.

Yes but that doesn't magically make an M3 more economical than a prius under normal roads. Driving makes a difference but I drive like a nutter and get 35mpg in my Corsa. All the careful driving in the world won't get you 35mpg in a Veyron.

And at 40mph, The prius will be doing much, much better than an M3.

Under very, very very specific conditions that'll never happen, the Prius is worse than an M3. No-one who buys a Prius will drive like that.

It was perfectly correct in the sense of effectively being propaganda. All true so long as you exactly recreate their lab conditions.

M3 > Prius and you can get more stuff in an M3

That's entirely true, was not the point of the feature.

The Prius actually carries fuck all thanks to the batteries and the fact you can't fold the seats. Like I say, a modern Corsa* can hold more. About 75% more as I recall.

*Other small cars are available. They probably have the same space.

I'm sure that I am not alone when I posit the theory that it wasn't actually a proper test.....

I suspect their results are accurate but it really was a calculated test to get the result they wanted. Sheer torque probably means the M3 could have stayed in 6th and matched any accelerating a Prius could do (since there's no really slow corners on that track)

That would be wrong. Drive 80 miles in the Polo flat-out in first, and drive the same 80 miles in the Range Rover at 55 in sixth.

They said they could have got 50, but it was on AT rather than road tyres, which increases it's resistance.

What were you up to last weekend?
Also: You have sliders? Respect!

Equally though, yes they scraped 47. My car driven by a normal person would get that, without being dismantled.

How you drive only makes up for so much.

And that link only backs up what I said about diesels. The Prius is a mess that doesn't solve the problem, I've said that a lot on WOS, RG, SA, GTXF and here. But that Top Gear test was insultingly rigged for the gag playoff and I'm astonished that wasn't obvious to everyone.

A 520d isn't an M3, all that does is, as I said, back up what I ALREADY said in this thread about diesels.

My dad owns a 320d, I know what it gets

It counts for about 25mpg on my bike. Absolutely hammering the poor thing, I struggle to get below 45mpg; riding very conservatively I can get 70mpg but it's fucking boring.

Still, I can't carry anything, I get soaked, and I'm unlikely to live past 30, just to even things about a bit.

Indeed, you won't get below 45, so it counts for a lot. But you caning your bike is still even with a stripped Landie in ideal conditions. That my only point, it's not by any means the whole story.

tbh, if you get an M3 and drive it like a granny, why the fuck do you have an M3? You really should have bought that 320d, you'd be getting another 20mpg for doing exactly what you're doing now.

I'm fine in that department after I stopped wearing graphite shoes.

My aim is to get 50mpg on my daily commute without being ultra-conservative about it. I've got bumper to bumper traffic for a couple of miles and then 16 miles on the motorway, which can also be bumper to bumper at certain bits.

Got 44 so far from a 1.2 12V Skoda.

Taking things to extremes doesn't help, though. You're never going to drive like that on the road, are you? I obviously meant "however you drive it within the realms of sane human behaviour".

Drive the same commute to and from work in each of those cars, and no amount of, gentle acceleration, good gear discipline, use of gradients or driving at "optimum" speeds on the motorway is going to get a better mpg out of Chelsea Tractor or a supercar than a small hatchback, even if that hatchback is driven at 80mph all the way down the motorway.

Especially as, if you drive the truck like that, you'd probably drive the polo like that.

Bah. 47mpg today and that was a fairly optimum run.