TV show quotes
[accompanied by James playing the theme music on a Casio keyboard]
On tonight's cut-price Top Gear: A small plastic car that's actually quite economical; we take a seasonal Yuletide trip to, eh... Birmingham; oh, and we do have a supercar! Albeit a quite cheap one.
[on the Chrysler Crossfire]
Now, of course, being a coupé, the styling is hugely important, and... oh dear.
Nought to 60 takes 7.2 seconds. There are animals which are faster than that.
So. It looks like a dog doing a poo; it's slow, uncomfortable, expensive, and cursed with a cramped, badly trimmed interior, an awful gearbox and no back seats. The engine doesn't make a particularly sporty noise, the ride is terrible, and it isn't especially economical.
[on the Brabus Smart Roadster V6 Bi-Turbo]
It's like a bottle of sports car concentrate.
[nomination for the Dullest Formula 1 Driver of the Year award]
Kimi Räikkönen. He's 24 years old, he's paid millions of pounds a year, and he chooses to live... in Chigwell.
[Ugliest Car of the Year]
Now those were the nominations, but I'm overruling all of them. I'm playing my joker and I'm going to say that the winner is the BMW... range!
It's the Enemy of the State Award, the person who's done the most to harm the cause of the petrolhead these last 12 months. Gentlemen, the nominations.
The Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, for his resolutely unpopular anti-motorist stance.
There are no more nominations.
[nominations for Surprise of the Year]
And the Vauxhall Signum. In particular, we were surprised that anyone could be catatonically stupid enough to make a people carrier that can actually carry fewer people than the saloon on which it's based.
There's normally something really tragic about the bottom of the range. You know, the 1.6 version. A little boot badge that says you're on the bottom rung. And you sit there in a world of velour looking at a little - a little slot on the dashboard where you know there would be a switch if this was a posh version, but instead you've got a little bit of plastic that just blanks it off. And you can't help driving along and thinking, "If I'd just paid a bit more attention at school and if I'd just worked a bit harder, I'd have air conditioning."
[on the Jaguar XJ6]
This car has that magic X-factor that we like so much on Top Gear. You'd sort of expect it to be really boring, but then when you drive it, you discover it makes perfect sense. I mean, here's a Jaguar that saves you a shedload of cash, and in return, all it asks is that you just press the pedal a bit harder. That's it!
And as for the Alfa 147 GTA, well, that's not dead, but it's as mad as a badger.
It's always been a bit of an old-school hooligan, the Civic Type R. If it were in a porn film, it would play the stable lad. Or the plumber. Rather than the smooth international businessman.
[on the Honda NSX-R]
And there's this. The gaiter at the base of the gear lever. Usually leather, it's been replaced with fine mesh to save 10 grams. I could've done that wearing a thinner pair of socks.
The thing is, no matter how hard it tried, it was never a Ferrari.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Top Gear pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
