Top Gear

I started watching the BBC's Top Gear a few years ago at the recommendation of my sister.  It's available in the US via Netflix Instant Streaming and BBC America.  For those unfamiliar with the show, it's about cars.  Super cars, luxury cars, practical cars, and cheap cars.  The show features a variety of segments ranging from serious analysis of very expensive super cars to ridiculous contests in which the three presenters compete to see who can buy the best 1,000-pound car, as determined by a number of challenges that usually end in some form of hilarious disaster.

I don't care about cars, or at least I didn't before I watched Top Gear.  Now, however, although I am far from being a petrol head, I can identify a car by its badge, I know what car I would buy if I were a multimillionaire (Aston Martin DB-9), and I know a bit of automotive and racing terminology.

One of the highlights of the show is the segment called "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car," which is just what it sounds like.  Top Gear has its own track, and a reasonably-priced car.  Their "tame racing driver," an anonymous and evidently mute, helmeted professional called The Stig, trains the star how to drive on a track.  He or she then takes a trip around the track as fast as possible and the lap time is recorded and compared to other stars who have raced the same car around the same track.  The segment always begins with Jeremy Clarkson interviewing the star.  This part can be boring if you're not familiar with the person, but then the star and the audience view the lap and the time is revealed.  Stars in this segment always talk about how good The Stig is at teaching them how to drive around a racetrack.  As far as I can see, much of it goes completely against the rules you would normally follow to 1) avoid accidents and 2) not destroy your own car prematurely.  But it sounds fantastic.  I would love to have The Stig teach me what to do, put on a helmet, strap into the Suzuki Liana or the Chevrolet Lacetti or the Kia Cee'd, and drive like a lunatic.  Unfortunately, I'm an ordinary American woman who might qualify for Top Gear: Tallahassee by virtue of some childhood fame in the form of several trips to the National Spelling Bee, but the chances of my ever being under the tutelage of The Stig are quite slim.  Still, it doesn't dim my enjoyment of the show.  It's good to have some silly and unlikely fantasies.  Keeps the imagination warmed up and ready to drive off in a cloud of tire smoke.