Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: top gear

Top Gear missed it’s chance with the Toyota Comfort GT-Z!

Today I watched the second episode of the new Top Gear season (season 20 already!) where Hammond organized a Taxi race. In this race he featured taxis from various countries like Russia, India, South Africa but for some reason he left out Japan. Now this is a missed chance as Japan would have an adequate contentder:
Toyota Comfort GT-Z Supercharged SXS10
Okay, the supercharged 3S-FE may not be the most powerful of the whole bunch, but with its tweaked suspension it probably would have beaten the competition in half a lap… Or could it be that they were actually frightened?

See the full video of the Comfort GT-Z here: Continue reading

Hilarious: kei cars19 years ago in Top Gear

Honestly I do love Top Gear, but I simply can’t find the time to actually follow it… Most of the time I just wait for the reviews and see if I really need to see an episode…
People already speculate that this actually might be the last series of the new Top Gear, which I can understand since all three of them are already presenting the new format for 8 years now (I know, May only 7…) and it slowly starts to become difficult to make the series even better than last season. ;)

Back to the old series: I found this clip from the old series (1991) where Jeremy Clarkson test drives a couple of the finest Japanse kei cars:

I was really puzzled on how much he actually liked them! Was he more forgiving in his early years or did he become soft for the little ones??

Hilarious: Clarkson Island

After watching this hilarious video by Harry and Paul I could not watch the latest episode of Top Gear anymore without thinking about…..pausing in the middle…..of the sentences!

The whole Z car battle of last Monday just looked silly compared against the Miata and Quattroporte comparison by Harry and Paul @2:40…

Ooowwwmygawd…..now that was funny!

Tiresome: Ken Block in Top Gear

To quote Jalopnik:
Did you miss Gymkhana sensei Ken Block take James May for a spin a few hundred spins on last night’s episode of Top Gear? No need to cry. We’ve scoured the interwebs and found the clip for ya!

Well, I did miss it and I’m not really happy I watched it… I’m getting a bit tired of the pre setup, staged, slowmotion videos of Mr. Block.

Don’t get me wrong here: I think he’s one of the best and talented drivers on this whole planet and he’s awesome when he takes tight corners and spaces with his Scooby! You can almost consider him as one with his car!

However…as you can see in the Top Gear clip this whole round is staged and set up beforehand. All cameras are perfectly in place and several shots are taken multiple times (see differences in tiretracks, skidmarks and smoke) and especially the finale jump is one big show setup. Must have taken them several runs to get that one right… Well, at least they flattened the ramps each time. ;)

Of course there was one run with James May and all his comments and reactions are genuine, but it is very obvious this is another arranged Ken Block video, just like the previous two… And that’s what what bores me…

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