Tonight, James goes racing in Finland.
Richard tries out the future of motoring in Japan.
And I cut up some wood near Godalming.
APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING
Good evening, hello. Hello, everybody.
And welcome to what's a great show for me.
Er, but first, OK, every year, Toyota, which, as we know,
makes everything from Formula One cars, to big desert bashing off-roaders for the United Nations,
says to its engineers, "Have a couple of weeks off, let your mind roam free, go mad.
"Let's see what you come up with."
And what they've come up with this year is, as I've been finding out, amazing.
To get to this new car, I had to go to Toyota City, which is a whole city owned by Toyota.
Imagine Birmingham, but full of Toyotas.
The car was held here, in their brand new fortress of excellence headquarters.
So things were looking good.
Right. Er, here it is.
There's no getting away from it.
What we have here...
is a chair.
It is quite a special chair, though.
They have said I can drive it today, here, in this room.
But they are quite nervous.
Put it this way, this is usually an office full of people, and desks.
It's called the iReal
and Toyota are hailing it as the future of personal transportation.
'Before I drove it, though, I was taken to meet its inventor.'
He explained the concept and the philosophy.
(HE SPEAKS IN JAPANESE)
And then he waited for me to ask a question.
The trouble is, it's a while since Top Gear has done a grown-up interview.
Will you make a big one for fat people?
Interview over.
I was briefed on how to use the toggles that control the throttle, the steering and the brakes.
LONG TONE
Wow! That's the horn?
'And then I was off.'
They are very polite people, so I'm saying this quietly.
We have had something similar in the UK for some time.
Called a wheelchair.
However, when no-one was looking, I left the room and discovered that it was so much more than a wheelchair.
In this mode, for example, the electric motors are trolleying me along at walking pace.
But if I want to go faster, I just press this button,
and then it drops down into sleek aerodynamic mode.
Top speed then - 20 mph.
Now, most creations like this are built just to get some coverage on motor shows.
But Toyota aims to put the iReal on sale in 2010, for around £2,000.
The plan is that we'll be using them for short journeys around town.
And don't think OAP mobility scooter.
Hip young things will forsake walking entirely and cruise around in these
at night, downloading tunes to their iPod from their iReal.
And these machines can talk to each other, too.
Say I want a coffee. Well, I can tell the machine, coffee.
It will then find the nearest coffee shop.
Tap it again and it will tell other iReal users
in the area that I'm going for a coffee, ask them if they want to join me.
So I'm now sending the message out to other iReal users, I'm off for coffee.
Come with me.
So you'll have a whole community of futuristic wheelchairs, going around
talking to one another, communicating about one another, like a sort of Stephen Hawking Facebook.
So, there you are.
The future of motoring.
Unless you're fat.
APPLAUSE
Well done, you.
Unfortunately, that means you can't have one, I'm sorry.
What? Because I've got too much dignity? No, fatty, you couldn't fit in it!
I'm not interested.
I'm not bothered about that because Honda has made an even better car, right. Here it is.
Now check that out.What?
How does that work?Well, basically, the silver things kind of
move up and down, and operate your legs, so, for going upstairs, or even walking on level ground.
Now guess who this is aimed at?
Well, I'm guessing people with disabilities, with legs, that's a clever piece of technology.
No, wrong, wrong. It's aimed at the able bodied.But why?
It's the Rotherham Robot.
You don't even have to walk to the chip shop anymore. Now you just go on that.
Well, what's the point in that?No, hang on, no, how fast does it go?
Dunno.I was at school in Rotherham and I could have done with that in cross country.
If you had one of those, mate, I'd love to have the remote control for it.
Captain Blur, look at him go!
Ha ha ha. James, not in the scissor factory, you'll hurt yourself!
Can you kick yourself in the nuts? Yes!
Many times. Bang, bang, bang.
We're definitely going to get you one of those.With a remote control. Yeah. Now.
Geoff Hoon, OK, is the Transport Minister, yes?
And he announced this week he wants to have more average speed cameras on the roads,
because he says they're good for safety and they reduce fuel consumption.
Now this is the same Geoff Hoon who, when he was Defence Secretary, said, and I'm quoting,
"We know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."
So he must be right about the speed cameras as well, then.
Yes, absolutely. I tell you what he's done.
Because he claims he goes on the M1 a lot in those roadworks.
You know, around Junction 6, 8, they've been doing them since 1850.
Forever. Yeah. Average speed cameras on that.
And he says, there you are, there's hardly been any accidents.
That's because the roads are jammed up!Not moving.
You can't crash when you're stationary.
Soon, though, we'll have that Tory transport bloke.
Whose name is?Er...
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Theresa Villiers. Who?
Theresa Villiers.That's a funny name for a bloke.Theresa..?
Villiers.Villiers. Tory Transport Secretary.
How can you know that?!
LAUGHTER
He is Theresa whatever.
Because there's only a finite amount of space for information in your head.
So if he's got that in it, what's come out?
How to dress properly?
Well done. Theresa... So actually this man's a woman.
That's fascinating because she hasn't really got any policies across that we've ever seen.
Not that we've heard of.So we've had to come up with some of our own.
A better system than the average speed camera, OK? Look at this.
So, this is real, this is in Denmark.
Loo what they're doing there.
LAUGHTER
It's brilliant.
Give me one good reason why that won't work?
You'd slow down.I'd slow right down.
Once again, Top Gear rides to the rescue of the nation.
Er, what's next, guys?Yes, I want to talk about Aston Martin, brought out a new car, it's the One-77.
Here it is.
It's a striking looking thing, I know. And I think it goes to show
just how in tune with the times Aston Martin are.
It really is a car for the moment.
7.3 litre V12.
Oh, I'm glad about that.
I must get 100 calls a day from people saying, I've got to have at least 7.3 litres and 12 cylinders.
That's what I want right now. Very much of the moment, absolutely.
Price - £1.2 million.
Oh, good thinking(!)
Literally this morning, 30 people called up, "I'm not spending a penny more than 1.2 mill on my next car."
Aston have got it bang on, because as we know, the world
right now is full of stockbrokers desperate for something to blow their enormous bonus on, and there it is.
Pretty soon, Aston Martin are going to be selling more keyrings than they are cars.
Or making more money from them at least.
Actually, they say that 100 potential customers have written to them to express their interest.
A hundred?
Yeah. Written in crayon, I suspect!
Great news.
They've done an off-road version of the Dacia Sandero.
Don't be fooled by the Renault badge. That's the Dacia, that baby.
What the hell are you on about?
It's a Dacia.
It's a Dacia. I know it says Ren... I've just said that.
Have you got a beard in your ears as well?
Why do ginger people always grow more of it on their faces? They don't!They do.
Can I just ask?
You see the show last week, Will Young was the guest.
And I don't know if anybody else noticed, but when he first sat down, Jeremy was not really bothered,
he didn't know his name, didn't know what to talk about.
Next minute, he's going all doe-eyed looking at him, talking...
Talking about interior design.
"Oh, Will, I love cushions as well, I'm having my house done up. Really?
"You had a Mini? They're lovely, Will."
(HE HUMS THE TUNE TO LOVE STORY)
Jeremy's in love!
Are you suggesting Will Young is gay?
Yeah, yeah, he is.
You're kidding!Yes.Is he?
To be honest, it was beautiful to watch.
It's just my gaydar doesn't work as well as yours, obviously.
That jacket. How big was the bet? Pretty big.OK.
I want you to look at this. This is a field of unsold Range Rovers.
Do you know why they're unsold? Nobody's got any money.
No, look at the colours.
That the range of colour that Land Rover does.
Now if you go down to Homebase to paint your walls, you can have any colour you like for a fiver.
Actually you can go in with that jacket, well, maybe not, you could go in with this shirt and
you could say, I want that colour, but a bit more orange, and they'd scan it with a thing.Exactly.
It's just not good enough. Look at this.
What I've got here, is the Audi brochure for the A8, a £70,000 car.
Range of colours available.
There you go.They've printed it in black and white!That's it, OK.
For an extra £2,400, they will paint it in any colour you like, from that chart.
That's just a spectrum.
Yes."Oh, sir wants it in visible light, does he?"
If you want your car in colour, £2,400.
If you want it in black and white. It's just ridiculous.
Well, what you need to do is buy a BMW X5. Because they understand this problem.
They have a special range which they call "BMW Individual,
"the higher your standards, the less room there is for compromise."
As an upshot of that, they offer it in...
Black, silver, silver, and black!
Gentlemen, you're getting all hot under your tweed collars about this.
Can I just say, I know a little bit about this, and the reason that car manufacturers...
They have to plan their paint colours years in advance because they have to test that each colour works
on the plastic of, say, the bumpers, and on the metal of the body, on those two materials...
Rubbish.They do.You say it has to be the same colour whether it's on plastic or metal?Yes.
No, because I was painting my sitting room the other day, and the
paint was exactly the same colour on the wall as it was on the wooden skirting board and on my hand,
and on the sole of my shoe, and subsequently on the stair carpet, all exactly the same colour.
I really want to show you this.
This is the Mercedes CLK. Can you see down here? These are soft-top fabric, OK?
Do you want to know what it says underneath? Cabriolet only.Ah!
I want to have it on my hard top!
Now, in a couple of weeks, James is doing his first ever supercar test out on our track. OK?
AUDIENCE: Whoo!
Now, shall we be honest?
James is not the fastest driver in the world and nor does he have the best sense of direction.
So, before letting him loose on our track in a very fast car,
we thought he should get some training.
So we said to him, "James, go anywhere you like for your training, just not Finland."
Finland.
According to a study by Leicester University, the sixth happiest country in the world.
Finns also top the world league table for coffee drinking,
and they borrow more library books per head than any nation on Earth.
Which is all very interesting.
But it doesn't explain this.
There's a popular saying in motor sport - "If you want to win, employed a Finn."
This sparsely-populated country has produced more rally champions, seven in total,
than any other nation. It has also produced more F1 world champions than anywhere else.
So, what's going on up there?
One of the reasons for Finnish driving prowess must be
quite simply they take driving very, very seriously.
Right from day one.
This is Petkr.
He's not a hoodie in a stolen a car, he's having a driving lesson.
And, like everyone else in Finland, he has to spend six of them on a skid pan.
He will also have lessons driving in the dark, and it will be three years before he gets a full licence.
It's all very strict.
And it needs to be, to be honest, because this is a typical Finnish back road.
It's full of sudden crests and hidden dips.
So as you drive along, you need to know about power on, power off,
feeling the car go light and the grip disappear.
You're going to become a racing driver.
So, to find out how the Finns wrap all this up into one big
bundle of skill, I went for a drive with one of the locals.
Unfortunately, the only person I could find was a retired bloke.
Mind you, he's still quite sprightly.
COMMENTATOR: It's Hakkinen. He's going through the left-hander.
Mika Hakkinen won the F1 World Championship twice,
on both occasions, beating the most successful driver of all time.
Michael Schumacher said you were the only driver he really feared.
(HE LAUGHS)
So where did you learn car control? Because they say the Finns
have an instinct for it that other nations on Earth don't have. You can just do it.
We start doing this sport very, very young.
So automatically we learn car control.
I give you an example. If you put a British person
learning to play cricket when he's 25 years old, it's too late to understand the name of the game.
Are you thinking through these corners or do you just feel it and you know?
No, honestly, what's going on now, we are going really slowly.
Are we?Yeah.
Sitting next to Mika, you get a fantastic demonstration of Finnish car control.
But, if I was to learn more, I couldn't just be a passenger.
Tomorrow, in the interests of science, though probably more
for your entertainment I suspect, the office has entered me in an amateur race on a rally circuit.
Thankfully, though, Mika has offered to train me up.
There's something else about Mika. He's not just helpful.
He's quite modest.
Last year, I went out with Jackie Stewart and he won the
World Championship three times only, instead of just two! Wow!
He taught me to be quite smooth and fast on a Tarmac circuit.
But can you teach me to be Finnish fast on a loose surface, do you think?
I can indeed.
The first and most important thing Mika would teach me
was a cornering move known as the Scandinavian flick.
And because he didn't want his mate's rally car
wrapped around a tree, we started off with some cones.
When we come with the car, how to trace the back end to touching all of these cones to find a perfect slide.
OK, this is how we get the back end around.
Then it was my turn.
A little left, a little right, on the gas, get the back end loose.
That's not enough, is it?
Action!
Better than the first run.
And then, finally...
You did it! You did it!
That's the Finnish way.
After we demolished all his cones, I took Mika out on the proper course.
Which he found relaxing.
A second turn in. A bit of a flick.
That wasn't bad.
Whoa!
Sorry, I forgot which way to go there. OK, third.
And then, with Yoda's guidance...
Now, back end out nicely here. Stay on the gas. Yeah, good.
Beautiful.
..it all came together. Oh-ho, good, excellent.
Lesson over, we stopped for a cup of hot reindeer blood
and talked about why the Finns are so suited to motor sport.
Tell me a bit about Sisu. What's Sisu?
Sisu in English means "courage".
What is to Finns is courage.
Let me give you an example. OK, climbing a tree and jump down from there, so that doesn't mean Sisu.
That is not courage.
That's stupidity.Exactly.
Sisu we can relate very much in motor racing.
For example, you drive a rally car in a forest, extremely really fast,
and you need courage to be able to brake late, to go throttle really early.
Go very close to the apex of the corners.
And also, they're quite reserved, the Finns.
I mean, you, famously, when you were Formula One driving, they'd ask you
a really complicated question, and you'd just say, "yes".Yes. That's right.Yes.
The reason I'm asking you is because I wondered if I might be
in some way a bit Finnish myself.
I don't like noisy people, so does that make me Finnish, do you think?
Yes. At home I quite like to have the
spanners in my tool box in order of size, so that I can always find the right one. Is that quite Finnish?
Yes, it is, very much. Personally, that's what I do.
If you're talking about the tool box, everything has to be very organised.
I quite like to have the air vents on my car all pointing the same way exactly. Is that Finnish?
Er...
No.
The next day it was time for me to mix it with the Finns.
I'd been entered in one of their folk races, which are run on part
Tarmac, part gravel, and take place every weekend, all over Finland.
The Finns had kindly sorted me out with a typical folk racing car.
A 1967 Volvo Amazon.
In actual fact it has 200 hp, but in every other respect, it's scrap.
But there's a very good reason for this.
There's a clever rule in folk racing.
All the cars in the race are given a nominal and equal value, let's say it's 1,000 euros.
Then at the end of the race, you can go to any other competitor and say,
I want to buy your car, and he or she has to sell it to you.
It stops people spending too much money, getting sponsorship and generally taking it too seriously.
It also means that the cars stay equal and the racing stays close, which in turn sharpens the skills.
But frankly, when the other drivers arrived, I stopped worrying about their skills.
The bloke over there is about 85.
And alongside him, the grid featured some housewives...
a child, a teenager...
and Bill Oddie.
Surely this can't be that difficult?
That girl next to me should be doing her maths homework.
Here we go.
By the time we hit the first corner, it was obvious these were
no ordinary pensioners, children, housewives and Bill Oddies.
Ow!
After you, Granddad.
Have a Scandinavian flick, Finnish person!
Damn, damn, I've lost it.
'I'd forgotten what Mika had said, these guys start doing this as soon as they can see over the wheel.'
I'm getting burned.
'I started to fight back.'
I've passed the BMW! That was an overtake on a Finnish person.
She's only 12 but that's not the point.
'But the 12-year-old wasn't having it.'
Oi!
Now normally I'd have been happy to stay there in the nice comfy ditch.
But that's not what Mike would have wanted.
It was time to summon up some Sisu.
I'm going to have the Volvo.
Opportunity for overtaking.
'Using Mika's training, I overtook a housewife.'
Chance for glory.
'And then Granddad.'
'But Bill Oddie was too much for me.'
'And in the end I finished somewhere near the middle.'
I think all my top level Finnish motor sport training has made me exactly average.
But that was average in Finland.
Anywhere else and I'd have been brilliant.
APPLAUSE
Are you ready then for your power time?Yeah.
Let me get this right. To pass your driving test in Finland, you have to be able to powerslide a car?
Absolutely.That's brilliant. But not as brilliant as something I've just thought of.Oh, God.
No, no. We know that nobody is buying V8 cars anymore, OK?
And I find that very sad. I don't want V8s to disappear into the pages of history.
So, how's this for an idea?
If you're not going to use V8s to power cars, how about using them to power something else?
Like, for instance, a food blender?
This is what I've got here in essence.
This is the 6.2 litre engine that you would normally put in a Corvette.
I see no reason why you couldn't put it in a kitchen.
So, here it is. There's the drive shaft going under the petrol tank into the kitchen cabinet.
You'll have to take out the wedding presents, the fondue sets you don't want.
Because, in here, you've got the diff, which then sends the drive shaft up here, and into the blender.
Very good. So what can you blend with it? I could blend you if I wanted to.
What I'm actually going to do, under this high visibility shield here, is blend some beef.
Beef?Beef, yes, beef. This is going to be a man's V8 smoothie that I'm going to make now.
So I'm going to plonk that in there like that.
Does that still have bones in it?
Yes. And then...
I'm going to put some chillies in.
This is Bovril. Because that's a V8 man's drink.
That's a collection of manly ingredients.
Yeah, haven't finished yet. Tabasco. Nice touch.
That wasn't...Just a dash
of that in there. And I think, for added bite, a brick.
It is actually a brick.
Oh, it's broken, but there we are. Pop that in there. Now we pop the lid on.
Perhaps you could give me a hand with this, Hammond. Because it's quite complicated.
Yes, I'm the practical man.
Those go on here like that. So we do it up.
Is this going to work, or is the top going to come off and we'll have a really hard time explaining
to the ambulance people how he's got beef bone antlers stuck in his head?
Just worried.Relax.
Yeah, relax when you've got the keys to a V8 blender.Right.
This is the controls.Oh, God, tell me that's not an accelerator pedal! Yes.
Safety precautions.
Is it loud?
Is it loud, James? Of course it's loud. Are we ready?
Here we go! This is in the kitchen at home, yeah?
MOTOR REVS EXTREMELY LOUDLY
It does make a bit of a racket.
CHEERING AND WHISTLES
Some of it came out.
Yeah, some of it did.
Actually, on the noise, we're used to vacuum cleaners and things at home,
so I think you'd grow accustomed to that after a while.
The thing is, what I'd like to do is,
whenever my wife puts the Archers on, which she does roundabout 7pm, I'd fire up my food blender.
Nice.Can you get the thing off? I'll prepare the glasses.
So this is like a manly smoothie cocktail?
Exactly.
This is the moment.Yes, yes!
Look at that!
That just is the business!Fantastic.
And delicious. Right, are we ready?
What a creation.Hmm. Here we go.
Get some of the bits. It needs a name.
We should give it a name. We should call it, um, Desperate Shag In A Skip.
Try some of that.A Quick One Round The Back Of The Dustcart.
AUDIENCE GASP AND THEN LAUGH
I think he likes it.
I've got the name for it.What?
The Bloody Awful.
Have you tried it?Yeah.
You haven't. Have you?Yes.
Show me. Put it in your mouth. Because that will put...
AUDIENCE GROAN
That will put testes on your chest, that will.
It's put hairs on my eyeballs.
I'm not sure this works.
Look.
I'm not giving up with this V8 idea, OK? Next week, old people.
You can't blend old people.No, you know the Stannah stairlift?
Very slow. How about a V8 Stannah stairlift?
The old lady, she'll be on the bog in half a second.Yeah, that's it.
So I'll get working on that. But that's then.
This is now, and it's time to put a star in our reasonably priced car.
Now my guest tonight has had an extraordinary life.
He's nicked a load of gold from the Iraqis.
He's nicked gold from the Italians.
He's shot Matt Damon in the face.
He's died when his trawler sank in a storm.
And he's had a very enormous penis.
LAUGHTER
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mark Wahlberg!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
How are you?
How are you?Good.Have a seat.
Mark, don't drink that. Don't...! Don't put it in your mouth!
It's brick and beef. It's not gone well!
I've got a couple of questions. It's very rare we get big American actors.
It's because Ross isn't around at the moment, so you're here.
LAUGHTER
I was on that show with Andrew Lloyd Webber.
His face is on inside-out, have you noticed?It's so weird. It's my second encounter with him.
The first time I saw him, I was at a heliport, going to Birmingham with George Clooney,
and George Clooney goes up and tells him, "Mark Wahlberg's over there, he's a huge fan."
He comes over, talking to me for half an hour. I didn't know who he was!
LAUGHTER
I was like, you know, "Phantom of the Opera? What is that?"
He's never done any rap songs. No hip hop.
He's not really from the hood!
The new film. I want to talk to you about that, if I may, Max Payne.
What's it about?
I play a homicide cop, the title character, whose wife and child are brutally murdered.
And I basically get to go and destroy everyone else that's responsible, even remotely.
It's an edge-of-the-seat proper action movie.
A Sunday-afternoon, relaxing, fighty film, which is what you need.
We've got a clip of it.
This is Jim Bravura. What unit is responding to the exit call?
You mean nobody's called anything in yet?!
'Would you like to report something?'Yes!
We need to come in, now!
Not a chance!Clear!
He's gone!
Great job, boys(!)
You see what you did? You let him get away. Everybody's going to get a medal for this - great(!)
APPLAUSE
It's not an adaptation of a Jane Austen book, is it?No, this is not.
This is the real deal, working with John, who is definitely one of the best action directors out there.
He really pushed the envelope. He's here. John Moore.
He's The Stig.He is not The Stig.
He is The Stig!
Not unless he can pump himself up!
Next question I've got, and this is an important one, OK?
There's a girl in this Max Payne movie who's called Olga Kurylenko.
Yes, the new Bond girl.
She's in that Bond film, and James Bond doesn't do having sex with her.
In Max Payne, she's lying in your bed, wearing, let's be honest, not much, and you go, "Oh, no."
Why? Have we got a picture of her? I want you to see what these guys... This is her.
Has she got a beard or something? LAUGHTER
Another John Moore question, because we could have easily shot the sex scene and not put it in the movie!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
There's many other scenes
that ended up on the editing room floor!
Are you the first action hero ever to have a side parting, here?
Obviously, you know, Michael Caine. So it was a big deal coming over here.
We wanted to make sure we could make a really cool movie.
To be honest, I thought it was a very cool movie.
I've heard there'll be a sequel to The Italian Job?
They've been trying to make a sequel for quite some time.
I don't want to do it for the sake of it. If we can't make it better, I don't want to do it.
They haven't been able to get the script in shape.
The worrying thing is the title.
The Brazilian Job?You see...
LAUGHTER
Does that translate?
That's a you know what...Yes. Have you got one?No.
You've got one?!Oh, I thought you were asking me!
Come on up here!
What's the most enjoyable film you've worked on, excluding Max Payne?
Probably The Departed.
The talent in that one. There's you, DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon...
..Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen. What made it so much fun?
Because it was my neck of the woods.
I've had a lot of experience with the Boston Police Department!
LAUGHTER
And finally being able to put all that to good use, you know,
playing a cop instead of being arrested by them, was fun.
You did have... How can I phrase this? A wild...
A wild upbringing, shall we say? Is that fair enough?Yes.
Yes.Let's put it like this. Your first cars, you didn't buy them.
Not all of them.
Actually, the first one that I kind of owned, I bought from a friend.
I was 13 years old, I didn't have a licence. I wasn't registered insured.
But I stole quite a few cars in my day.
Did you steal the same guy's car a few...?I did. He was...
How many times did you steal his car?
Probably, like, 10 or 15.
I'd drive around, he'd find it or the cops would find it,
bring it back, I'd walk down the street, jump in the car,
pinch the window, unlock it and jump back in and start it.
He'd come running outside, chasing me. I'd be like, "Hey,BLEEPyou! See you later!"
I want to apologise. I probably cost him heartache.
He probably missed work because I went joyriding in his car.
You're what we call a petrolhead. I don't know what you call them over there? Rivetheads?
Gearhead.Gearhead. That's what I was looking for.
Your cars have been good,
looking back through the history. What was the first one? SL Mercedes?
Yeah, a brand-new car, that was the first one I bought.
And now you have...?A Maybach.
The big one, 62 inch.
LAUGHTER
On purpose, or was it in a cereal packet or something?
LAUGHTER
And then I have a Brabus Mercedes 550.
Tom Cruise is a Brabus fan.
I don't know.Do you not know him?
We attend different churches, so I don't.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I'm at the one with Jesus, baby!
You came down here, presumably, utterly bewildered that there's a bleak airstrip in the middle
of England with a man who won't take his helmet off called Stig,
who takes you out in a not-very-exciting car with the steering wheel
on the wrong side and a lever sticking up out of the floor.
Did that baffle you, by the way, the lever?It did. What was that?
LAUGHTER
Is that why you didn't treat our car quite as well as, let's say, other people treated it?I'm sorry.
Did you break our car? Ibroke a couple of them, I think.
I heard! There's a cameraman over there,
and some poo came out of him.
LAUGHTER
The crazy thing is, I went so far off the track,
and then next time around, he was in that same exact spot.
I thought, "He's got balls!"
LAUGHTER
I'd just like to see... Go on, sorry.
I'm just glad this isn't how I make my living, because I would be broke!
We don't know. Shall we have a look at the lap?
AUDIENCE:Yeah! Let's play the tape.
'Here we go!
'That's an aggressive start!'
LAUGHTER
'Bloody hell! That's aggressively turned there! And there!'
This is a hunk of crap. 'That's... You've gone mad!'
You've got balls, standing there!
'That's cutting the corner, and that's cutting...
'Is he going to kill this one?
'Were you just aiming for the cameraman?'
ENGLISH ACCENT: Here we are on a race track in the UK, Mark Wahlberg.
'That's Jason Statham, who it actually is!
'That was quick. Close to the tyres, yes! Move those!
'Not quite so quick there, but that's a good line.
'That's not bad.
'Coming up to Michael Gambon corner, and we are across the line!'
APPLAUSE
This is the board.
Since we've had that car, these are the people, most of whom you won't have a clue who they are.
I don't know any of them, really.
Well, you know him, Simon Cowell?
Ray Winstone, I worked with him.Ray Winstone, obviously, The Departed.
Brian Cox.
Yes, he was really dreadful. You want to beat Brian Cox?Yeah.
I've got the time here.
You did it. It was a mad lap, got to be honest.
Super aggressive. You did it...
..in 1...
So you're better than Brian Cox!
..48.7.
So he's under the 1:50, give him a round of applause.
APPLAUSE
That's not bad. Somewhere in the middle.That's very good.
The steering wheel was on the correct side...
That's really good, and it's been an absolute joy to have you here.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Wahlberg!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, in these dark and difficult times, very few people can afford a Mitsubishi Evo.
Even the base model, the 300, is the best part of 30 grand.
However, the other evening, we decided...In the pub...
Some beer helped us to realise that whatever car you've got, you can
make it as fast as an Evo X, and at a fraction of the cost.
The producers said that sounded like a challenge for us,
so they said they would provide some sort of car, then we'd have two days to modify it
and try and make it faster round our track than a Mitsubishi Evo X. We were very excited about this,
as you can see from the way Jeremy arrives in someone else's Aston Martin.
'The three of us turned up on day one, not knowing what car the producers had bought.'
I reckon it'll be something like a Focus, but a really small-engine one.
We can't start with something like that and get it that fast - it'll be...
Have you met our producers?!Yes.
When was the last time they said, "Here's a job for you, and we've made it easy"?Never.
They're not going to now.
It'll be something...
It's not a Ferrari F430.It's not.
Here we go.
It is...
What that is is a Renault Avantime.
I wasn't expecting that.
Introduced in 2002, the Avantime was a monumental failure.
Only 435 were sold in Britain before it was dropped from the price list after just 18 months.
Weirdly, it's one of the few cars ever made that us three all like.
Right, so cars that we all like.
This.Yes.
Ford Mondeo.Good one.
This.Subaru Legacy.Yes.
Yes.It's not a big list!That's it!
The most impressive thing in the whole car is just, there's more air in here than there is in Montana.
It's very spacious!
Let's just have a systems check on everything. Heated rear window works.
Heated seats works. All lights working in the back?
I have a selection of lights working.
This is six years old and everything works, which is odd, because most Renaults...
Six minutes.
Then there's the Avantime's party piece. Give it a whirl.
Oh, yeah!
I'm outside!
Look at this!
This is what it's like being a dog. And there's more cleverness. Look at this.
To make getting into the back easier, the doors were very, very long.
You'd imagine that'd make it useless in car parks, but no, they fitted it with
clever double hinges that they called kinematic, and look, in a gap that big, wide open. Very clever.
This was a very intelligent, very unusual and very comfortable car.
However, while it can turn heads, it struggles to turn corners...
Ease it round here. Check it out!
..as The Stig will now demonstrate.
Three, two, one, hit it!
Even though that's the top-of-the-range model, the Privilege, had a
three-litre V6, know what the nought to 60 was? Nine seconds. What's an Evo? 4.5?
It's about twice as long.
Andthe suspension is for ironing out bumps, not smashing them down with a steel fist.
Not designed to corner level and flat.
Of course, we knew this front-wheel-drive box would be nowhere
near as fast as an Evo round our track.
But we didn't realise how nowhere near.
Go on.
This is the size of the challenge.
What was the Evo?1:28.2.
1:42.5.
The Avantime was more than 14 seconds slower.
Then, things got worse.
"You know you have two days to make your modifications, so now you need to know the budget.
"A Mitsubishi Evo X costs £30,000.
"You can spend half of that to make the Avantime as fast."
That's not bad, actually.15,000?
We could do loads with that. There's more.
"£5,200 was spent on buying the car itself, so you have £9,800 left."
How much do they spend in Formula One?
They say that, to cut a second a lap, it's £10 million.
So we need £140 million.
Is there anything behind it?
Just James, don't worry.
With a lot less than that, we backed the car into a borrowed workshop, and immediately ran into a problem.
There's a... How do you make it do it?
Where's the thing?
Shall I get a hammer? No, there it is.
No, it isn't. That's where the spring is.
It is it.
'Eventually, we got the bonnet up, and then immediately decided to have an argument.'
Look, guys, power.
Power is everything.
There's other stuff to deal with before we get to power.
The way it handles, the way it drives.
Why don't we just put nitrous on it?
Remember what happened to the first Stig?
He fell off an aircraft carrier. Yeah, we used nitrous.
Right, cornering is where it matters. We know from the track.
Look at the lap board.
The Lotus Exige, not a particularly powerful car, goes quickly because it goes
round corners quickly. GT Mustang, loads of power, slow, because they won't go round corners quickly.
That's more important than power. Where do we start?Brakes.
James insisted on buying new ones.
This is the standard front disc of the Avantime.
This is the one we're proposing to put on.
Bigger area, vented, keep it cool, make it more efficient.
'For sure, all this would mean The Stig could break later into the corners, but there was a downside.'
How much do these brakes cost?
£3,000.£3,000?
We've used nearly a third of our budget on the brakes?
It'll make a difference. Most important thing to do.
'While I wasn't helping, something began to worry me.'
Any minute now, Monkey and Wrench over there
are going to realise they've made a catastrophic mistake.
Hang on.
The callipers are too big for the wheels.
Ugh!
'So we had to blow more of our budget on bigger wheels and tyres.'
How much were they?A lot.
£600.
'As The Stig was inserted in for another lap,
'James and Richard were convinced it was money well spent.
We have learned from our racing experience, which we all share, and
we have applied it to this, and we have improved.
41, 42...
What?
What was it?1:42.5.
Is it broken or something? He's gone 2.1 seconds slower.
'This was baffling. We decided we had bought the wrong tyres.
'So we spent another 600quid on better ones.'
We've got some road-legal but very sticky track tyres.
Which could be worth several seconds.
BLEEP!
'The new rubber was sure to get us going in the right direction.'
If he can brake later and has more grip in the corners, he can get power sooner.
Better tyres will enable the brakes to work.
15 seconds, this'll be. The one thing I know about is tyres.
1:42.7.
So, with better brakes and better tyres we are travelling...
0.2 of a second slower than we were originally.
This doesn't make sense!
How does motor racing work?
We could try another driver.
'Having blown half our money and got nowhere, we decided we should
'spend a massive £2,000 on some new suspension.'
Hang on, Stig's still in it!
We haven't got time to get him out!
'Fitting the new suspension was a job for James and
'the boffins from the Top Gear technology centre,
'which left Jeremy and me looking for something to do.'
HE MUMBLES
What?
Shouldn't we lighten it?
What do you want to take out?
Seats. Take out just the back seats.
No, cos then it's a two-seater.
'Hammond, though, was right.'
Just feel this. That's how much we've lost.You bugger!
Yeah, that's...heavier!
The amount of fuel needed just to move an electric heated seat...
That would cost you a noticeable number of quid a month.
'In order to keep the Avantime as a family car, we borrowed two race
'seats from our 24-hour BMW racer and two from Hammond's stretched MG.
'Then we set about replacing the heavy glass roof.'
It's four and a half hammers across.
'With our weight-shedding completed, I went to ask James about his suspension.
'Which was a mistake.'
The springs are stiffer and the dampers can be adjusted so the compression rebound changes.
If you alter that very finely, you can keep the tyre in contact with the road more of the time.
If the weight goes off or tyre bounces up, you lose grip, which lowers
your cornering speed and you know that cars are faster... You asked!
'With the car now lighter, lower, firmer, grippier
'and fitted with better brakes, it was time for another lap.'
Go!
'It was now almost the end of our first day,
'and we had to have something to show for all our effort.'
Come on, Stiggy.
Cornering flat.
He's better. This is faster.
Come on, come on!
Ooh!1:38.2.
Which means we're exactly 10 seconds away from our target.
I suppose at this point you two will kill me if I say power.
I dunno, what are you saying? Let's see.
No, look...
James, just old-fashioned tuning.
Cylinder heads, camshafts, inlet manifolds. You can get filthy dirty.
Think of that! An all-nighter in the workshop!
All those bolts you could name and line up. We won't interfere.
Put spanners back in order!And I promise, we wouldn't cock about.
We would do everything you asked us to do. I promise.
Anything?Anything.
Including leaving the workshop and not coming back until I finished?
Just leaving you alone all through the night. Can I have a bag of chips?
Yes, I'll buy you a bag of chips.
All right.Yes!
'Before James set about his all-nighter,
'we put the Avantime on a rolling road to see how much power it was
'producing after six years of hard graft.'That's astonishing.
That is astonishing, actually.
Are you sure that's right?Yep.
It started with 210. It's now got 157, as it turns out.
All our figures so far have been gained with about 150 horsepower.
We should be able to get it up to 210 with just, effectively, a good service.
'So, we filled James up with chips and left him to it.'
'Come the dawn, the engine had a new air filter, new injectors and a new inlet manifold.
'Once more, the Avantime went on a rolling road.'
Is that the HP?Woah!
That is 206, is it?206?!
'Hopefully, with all this shiny new power, our Avantime would fly.'
Listen to that power!
Some of your heart and soul's in that car.
We really are a bit stumped after this, because how much money have we got left?Only 300 quid.
Here he comes.
1:36.20.
Wow, all night!
And your face and...
Is there anything more to come out of that engine?
No, because I think the gearbox will just break.
Aerodynamics.
Did you say you bought a spoiler?
At a charity auction, yes. What sort of spoiler?
A Formula One one.Well, it is a spoiler. He has a point. It's a spoiler.
Fetch the spoiler!Let's see.
'Once it was on, though, James and I had our doubts.'
Look, spoilers make things go faster.
Fact. F1 Cars have spoilers on, they go like the clappers, ergo, success.
Among your friends with their baseball caps in Cheltenham, that is
a generally-held belief. If you think it's going to
push down onto the rear wheels, and this is a front-wheel drive car...
I think the word is...optimistic. I think the word is...ridiculous.
'Nonsense! This would be the final piece in the jigsaw.'
Yeah! 1:35...An hour of your life.
1:37.03.
Nearly a second added by the spoiler.
'However, while Hammond's spoiler was a dead loss, it did give me an idea.'
Remember when we did the brick car race and we had that splitter on the front?
When it fell off, we were two seconds a lap slower.
It made a big difference.
Why don't we put a splitter on?
'In theory, a well-designed splitter erases understeer, but ours wouldn't be well designed
'because Jeremy insisted he'd make it out of wood.
'So, it had come to this.
'All our hopes now rested on Jeremy's carpentry.'
That plywood has, in essence, on this lap, got to take off
eight and a bit seconds.
'But then...'
There's smoke. There's smoke.
It's on fire.Stig! Out! Out of the car!
Turn the engine off.
Your stupid plywood splitter has caught fire!
It's still on fire.
It is the splitter.It's on fire.
Wait a minute.
This is something I've wanted to do.
I have worked in television for 20 years and never had the chance yet, OK?
Back to the studio.That's my line!
That's what I wanted to say!
May, youBLEEP!
What I thought I'd do is put the fire out and then say...
Back to the studio. Ha ha!
APPLAUSE
Anyway, we failed.
But we decided not to give up, and in our spare time we kept working on the Avantime.
Little details, to see how fast we could actually make it go.
We didn't have any money left, obviously, so we spent our time fine-tuning adjustments, getting
the suspension, the brakes right, the camber on the wheels exactly lined up.
We even gave The Stig a plate of his favourite raw pork, for some heroics in our last do-or-die lap.
And here comes that lap now.
'And he's off! So, this is it.
'Come on, Stig.
'Look at that. It looks like a touring car!
'A French plastic one, but a touring car nevertheless.
'Look at that, look at the brakes, it shows they're working well.
'Brilliant-looking thing.
'Now, coming up to Chicago.
'Here he is. More brilliant braking.
'Taking that quite wide. Probably a Formula One line, that.
'Going down to the hammerhead, this is the real test.
'Look at it squirming under braking, very effective.
'Gets the tail out nicely one way, back the other.
'Understeer a bit, but the MDF aerodynamics keeping it on the tarmac beautifully.
'Now, come on, this is James's engine tuning here,
'coupled with my exhaust, obviously. Look at the power.
'Stig would be looking impressed if you could see his face - assuming he has one.
'Two corners left.
'He's lost it!
'No, wait, that's not out of control, it's drifting like an Evo X.
'It's impressive. Here he comes through Gambon, and across the line.'
APPLAUSE
This is what we're waiting for.
This is 1:28.2.
We did it in...1...
It's down here, it's a disaster. That is completely baffling, because
every year in this country we spend £906 million modifying cars.
As far as we can tell, it's money down the drain.All wasted!
And on that bombshell, it's time to end.
Thank you very much for watching. See you next week. Goodnight.