Andrew Frankel: The next Top Gear needs presenters who love cars
“For a new car show, employ presenters who know what they’re talking about”
Now that Top Gear and The Grand Tour are either dead or in a state of indefinite hiatus, you can bet every pound and dollar you have that production companies on both sides of the Atlantic are working feverishly to find new formats to fill their shoes. It will not be easy.
Neither show, so far as we are aware, ended because it had become unpopular, and following in their footsteps invites comparison to one show that is an institution and another whose presenters are institutions.
Nor do I pretend for a moment to have the answer, not least because if I did I’d have worked up a treatment and flogged it by now. But I do have an observation, which seems blindingly obvious to me but, given the number of times this simple rule has been ignored, not to the commission editors of too many car programmes. And it is simply this: employ presenters who know what they’re talking about.
When people talk of Clarkson, Hammond and May and the unique success they have enjoyed, it is about the ‘chemistry’ that exists between them, and it is that so many others have failed to replicate. Why? Sure, all three are excellent presenters but they have something else in common too: they know what they’re talking about. More than that, they all love cars.
Now look at those who replaced them on Top Gear. Of them all, just Chris Harris survived from first to last. And guess what: he knows and loves cars like few I’ve met. This is not a coincidence. You may recall Kate Humble presented a couple of series of Top Gear at the end of the 1990s. Kate happens to be a friend and I am sure she’ll not mind me sharing with you that she felt uncomfortable on the show because, brilliant presenter though she is, what she knows and loves is wildlife and wild places. What she does not do is find herself on Porsche’s configurator at 1am agonising over whether active anti-rollbars are a crucial option to have on your fantasy 911. And all credit to her for that.
So if anyone is about to pitch a new car show to some gimlet-eyed commissioning editor, do yourself a favour and point this out to him or her. Gather enough of them together, and the chemistry will come.
We spent some of the Christmas break at the home of someone whose garage is considerably bigger than his house, and his house is not small. It contains all sorts of exotic automotive delicacies, precisely none of which was coming out in the filthy weather to cart a few of us to the pub. It was a task left to his son’s latest acquisition, a Fiat Panda 100HP, a car with four different tyres, four different shades of red paint, purchased with 90,000 miles on the clock for the princely sum of two grand.
It was superb. On damp lanes a surfeit of enthusiasm can make up for a great deal of missing horsepower and I delighted in flinging it through the puddles even if the back end felt about as well tied down as a helium balloon. This is a well-known problem with the original spec dampers and the net abounds with advice on putting it right, but essentially it boils down, as it so often does, to fitting some decent shockers.
Even so, I had a ball and hadn’t been home for half an hour before I started trawling for one. There are of course many worse things wives have caught husbands looking at on the internet but when she solicitously enquired what role such a device might play in our lives, save costing us money, I had to concede I was stumped. And that was that.
“Pirelli’s Sottos appear to have been designed by sorcerers”
By quite considerable contrast, I travelled to and from by McLaren Artura, a car with which I am spending a little time at present. Because of the time of year, it came fitted with Pirelli’s Sottozero winter rubber, and while I have some reservation about the company’s ultimate track day tyres relative to the best opposition from Michelin, the Sottos appear to have been designed by sorcerers. Grip levels on streaming wet roads simply beggar belief.
I once had this demonstrated to me in the most delightful way. I’d taken a Sotto-shod McLaren 720S to Silverstone to spend the day ‘working’ for the Mission Motorsport charity, giving passenger rides to injured service personnel. The track was cold and wet so while everyone else slithered their way around, gingerly prodding their throttles in the hope it wouldn’t send them into the Armco, I treated them all like an obstacle course, cars simply to be driven up to and around. At times it didn’t feel like I was seconds faster than anyone else out there, but more like minutes.
After one session, a French driver wearing impressive overalls came up to me and said, “I was in the Ford GT you just passed. I couldn’t believe how fast you were making that car go.” When I looked him up later he turned out to be an LMP2 driver of some repute. Did I do the decent thing and tell him the McLaren’s turn of speed had almost nothing to do with its driver and all to do with its tyres, or did I leave him in awe of my sublime talent? I’ll let you figure that out for yourself.
A former editor of Motor Sport, Andrew splits his time between testing the latest road cars and racing (mostly) historic machinery
Follow Andrew on Twitter @Andrew_Frankel