Top Gear this Sunday

[Nutcase]

The twin of my Car is going to be on Top Gear this sunday well, the road legal, decent condition twin along with a few other friends' cars.

Can't wait, hope they're gentle

Shame I won't get to see the prog til later in the week

[Toby]

Sounds intriguing, can you tell us more?

[Nutcase]

Very little as I don't know myself!

http://www.saabclub.co.uk/index.php/latest-news.html

[volospian]

For years Clarkson has been dismissing Saabs as "nothing but a rebadged Vectra" and so on, then last night, he's telling us that "Saab even changed the Sat Nav!".

The toruble is, people believe this "just a rebadged" nonsense and even tell their friends not to buy cars on that pretext. The amount of crap I used to read on, for example, the Motors forum at OcUK. I even read posts saying things like "buy a Mondeo, they're amazing" and then a post later in the same thread, by the same person, saying "OMG, WTF??!? Don't buy an X-Type, they're nothing but a rebadged mondeo, FFS!!".

Now Saab have gone to the wall and some of that "rebadged vectra" nonsense bandied about by these idiots is to blame.

[Nutcase]

There is an element of truth in there - whilst Saab indeed did rework as much as they could, large parts of the suspension, brakes etc. are all still the same. Which is why such things as "Viggen Rescue Kits" are needed to bring the handling back to how a Saab should be - but certainly a lot of brand damage was done.

A few niggles with the show - Captain Slow pissing around with the pedals in the 2-stroke - that's what freewheel is for! And whilst the c900 convertible is a bit flexible, not a word on the fantastic lines on it?

Sort of dissapointed with the 5 door dropped on its roof - whilst it makes the point very clearly, waste of a classic. That's the top gear way though - I feel even for the marinas they trash!

I think they quite liked the 99 Turbo felt a bit smug after that

[A Place of Light]

Clarkson in "being a complete bell end" non-shocker.

[divine]

Originally Posted by Nutcase

Sort of dissapointed with the 5 door dropped on its roof - whilst it makes the point very clearly, waste of a classic.

To be fair though, they're hardly going to be going out to find a minter to just break, they'll be doing it to something that's destined for the scrap heap regardless.

[Nutcase]

There's quite a few rare options on that car that people have already lamented!

[Stan_Lite]

Originally Posted by volospian

The toruble is, people believe this "just a rebadged" nonsense and even tell their friends not to buy cars on that pretext.

I've seen evidence of this quite a few times. I always wonder what sort of people take seriously opinions espoused by 3 man-sized children who make a living from driving sideways around a track in expensive fast cars and smashing things up.

Top Gear is relatively harmless entertainment - as long as you view it as entertainment and pay no attention to any "advice" you may hear on it. It's actually quite shocking how much influence it has.

Having said that, I never miss an episode - fortunately I have the good sense that, should I ever be in the position where I'm buying a new car, I won't be making my choice based on the say-so of messrs Clarkson, May and Hammond

[volospian]

Originally Posted by Stan_Lite

I've seen evidence of this quite a few times. I always wonder what sort of people take seriously opinions espoused by 3 man-sized children who make a living from driving sideways around a track in expensive fast cars and smashing things up.

That's the trouble with shows (and magazines) like TG. They try to be funny. It's not amusing to say "well, this car shares some of the same components as this car over here, as almost all cars are built to a more cost effective platform style process nowadays, VAG, GM, Ford, they all do it" It's possibly funnier to say "meh, it's a just a x... in drag... with funny cross eyed headlamps... like this [close up of Clarkson crossing his eyes and pulling a funny face]"

And to be fair, it's not really Clarksons fault. As you say, his job is to entertain. He'll happily admit (indeed he has done on several occasions) that he makes most of his stuff up on the spot and often cannot even remember the other car he's comparing this particular model to.

I've got one of his books made up of his newspaper articles over a year or so and he states "a Saab engineer once told me the maximum power you can put through FWD system is x" however, he uses this quote about 3 times and each time the power figure the Saab engineer apparently gave him is different, ranging from around 170hp to 200hp or so, depending on the car he's reviewing at the time.

Yet still people listen to what he says, and spread it around as though it were the answer to life, the universe and everything.