'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
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Gear Up for the First U.S. 'Top Gear' Trailer, Gearheads
by Danny Gallagher, posted Aug 12th 2010 3:30PM
Every fan of BBC's insanely popular and perfect 'Top Gear' knows that the reason it's the most successful car show is because it's not about cars. Audiences couldn't care less about whether or not Jeremy Clarkson quoted the correct engine displacement for the McLaren F1 or if a Koeningsegg CCR can go from 0 to 100 mph in 8 seconds (it's 7.9, actually). What makes the show so great and entertaining is that it's really about fun. It isn't, as Jezza once said, what you drive, but how you drive it.
The History Channel is giving America a 'Top Gear' of its own, starring Adam Ferrara, Tanner Foust and Rutledge Wood, and the first trailer for the U.S. version hit the web earlier this week. Check out the trailer and a brief gut reaction after the jump.
The trailer doesn't focus a lot on the gearhead side of the car show, because the only way it can really work is if the three hosts have a rivalrous camaraderie that makes their various challenges heated and hilarious. So it smartly tries to show that our intrepid crash test dummies have the kind of repartee that can carry the show.
It feels a little light in terms of the basic wit and wisecracking that seem to flow out of the British version so easily, whether they are reviewing the newest abomination from Hyundai or racing airport vehicles around a track. It does, however, absolutely kill when it shows the central core of the cheap car challenges, in this case a "moonshine run" around a dirt track in what appears to be my grandfather's 1977 Ford Granada (well, the suspension looks to be about the same and I never rode in it on anything rougher than his pristine driveway).
Sure, it's natural to be apprehensive about retooling a great television show for a new audience, something even Foust himself admitted to in our short e-mail chat back when the show was first announced. However, watching a beat-up American jalopy jump a 30-degree dirt ramp and landing so hard that it creates the world's first concave car design is hilarious in any country, and Adam's "brilliant" landing sucked a big laugh out of me. It might not be the same thing, but it has some heavy potential to be something really fun.
Are you looking forward to the American 'Top Gear'?
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