Features
In Top Gear we trust
JC sporting a baseball cap? Hammond and May swapping high-fives? Certainly not! However...
The Top Gear telly programme has quietly become a global phenomenon. Recent figures suggested an extraordinary viewership, something in the region of one billion people across the globe.
This explains why Jeremy gets mobbed on the streets of Dubai, why Richard Hammond is swooned over by housewives in Auckland and why James May will shortly appear on a series of commemorative stamps in Luxembourg. Probably.
Only one country has been strangely resistant to the charms of three blokes cocking about in an old aircraft hangar - the United States of America. Until now.
Earlier this year, Discovery decided they wanted in on the Top Gear action, starting with 18 repackaged programmes using existing items from TG UK.
'The show that popped out the other end was something familiar and yet rather different'
Accordingly, our plucky lads spent five days at the Top Gear base recording new studio links in a more, er, Yank-friendly way. Basically, getting Jeremy not to call them fat and stupid.
This, however, was a mere entree for Discovery's main plan: to make their own version of Top Gear on US soil. Their own studio, their own test track, even - since our boys were too busy and anyway James May doesn't like places that don't serve a decent cup of tea - their own presenters.
That's why last year a brand new TG USA production team assembled deep in the Mojave desert to create a pilot show for their version of Britain's favourite almost-Bafta-winning car programme.
And, like their idea of what constitutes a decent cup of coffee, the American take on Top Gear wasn't entirely the same as ours.
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