Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
View Threaded
Mon 1 Aug 2011 14:51
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - jamie745

Thought people might be interested as HJ writes for the Telegraph, and so does James May which is probably why Clarkson's getting most of the hate and May somewhat exempt. Note even the headline is 'Jeremy Clarkson criticised for parking in disabled bay' when the car in the picture is the Peugeot James May was driving and parked beside him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-gear/8674888/Jeremy-Clarkson-criticised-for-parking-in-disability-bay.html

Nobodies condoning hogging disabled bays without permit but what they havent pointed out was the car park was closed, presumably for filming, so it really doesnt matter. Some people need to grow up.

Edited by jamie745 on 01/08/2011 at 14:51

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Mon 1 Aug 2011 17:12
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - daveyjp

Don't worry about bodies for disabled motorists.

I lost all sympathy for them and thier cause when I found out they take contributions from private parking companies who use lies, scare tactics and fraud to get money out of disabled people who park in disabled bays.

Edited by daveyjp on 01/08/2011 at 17:12

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Mon 1 Aug 2011 18:40
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - jamie745

My mother is a disabled motorist and i mentioned this to her today and she watched the program and didnt even notice they were in disabled bays and was more interested in the feature about the electric cars. As i think most people were to be quite frank. And as mentioned earlier and was obvious at the time the car park was closed to allow filming, more of Top Gear is pre-planned than people realise, did these people supposedly 'outraged' at this think they just turned up, got a handheld camera out and started filming as disabled people were in a que desperate to park?

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Mon 1 Aug 2011 19:12
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - expatsFL

On a slight off to the right direction. We have just seen the 2 series of captain slow and Oz Clarke doing their wine thingy......May comes across as a complete idiot!

Edited by Avant on 03/08/2011 at 00:18

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Mon 1 Aug 2011 21:32
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - SteveLee

Well it seems Mr May reads some of the comments on his own columns, I've been banging on for years about the fashion for car manufacturers to set their cars up to win group tests against the stopwatch around the track - completely ruining them as road cars. This season he seems to be campaigning against the 'ring being used for road car development. Where do I invoice him for royalties?

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Mon 1 Aug 2011 22:03
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - unthrottled

A very good point. But (new) cars are aspirational purchases and they require aspirational accoutrement-or they don't sell. Who's ever managed to overheat drums on the back axle? Yet everyone thinks they need 4 discs!

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 2 Aug 2011 00:02
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - jamie745

You've now got normal four door saloons which have laptime stopwatches and i have commented a few times that the ever popular trend of massive alloys, low profile or run flat tyres so thin it looks like they're painted onto the rims is wrecking the ride on perfectly good cars and not suitable for Britain's somewhat undermaintained roads (i have some spending figures on what we went in taxation on motoring vs what the Government spends on our roads and they dont make pleasant reading).

Some cars unthrottled will do well to have discs all round, i can understand why an AMG CLK Black would have ceramic discs all round etc but do you really need them on a little hatchback? I mean...really? Its not new though, the Peugeot 406 had 4 discs.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 2 Aug 2011 00:29
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - Sofa Spud

I thought the only argument against 4-wheel disc brakes was that it was more difficult to engineer an efficient parking brake. But presumably that problem has been solved on most modern vehicles and if such brakes are produced for top models in any range it would make sense to fit them to all models.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 2 Aug 2011 00:32
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - bathtub tom

>>Who's ever managed to overheat drums on the back axle?

I managed 'brake fade' whilst towing a caravan down a Welsh hillside (new Moprod brand pads). The handbrake on rear drums kept me out of the scenery!

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 2 Aug 2011 00:37
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - unthrottled

Oh, overheating the front brakes is easy! But the back? The rear brakes (of drum or disc persuasion) do very little braking. However, they look sporty through the spokes of the alloys...

Painting the callipers is an accepted way of further reducing stopping distance by at least 23%.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 3 Aug 2011 00:14
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - SteveLee

Yes I can understand front discs - especially as twin leading front and leading/trailing rear drum set ups meant a reversing car had little braking power, the trend for beefy rear disc brakes is daft, witness Honda Accords and Lexus IS200s both of which suffer from corroded rear discs as there's not enough rear brake bias to keep them clean - unless you drive around with a dead body in the boot to give the rear brakes something to do!

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 3 Aug 2011 00:36
Top Gear Causes Another Storm In Teacup - Dynamic Dave

I see Avant has deleted a few posts from this thread. Good call, IMHO. I would have done the same had I still been a moderator on here, and sorry to cause you extra work.

Not wishing to spark up the debate again, I'd just like to also apologise to unthrottled for accusing him of something that I later realised he hadn't done during our debate on whether it was acceptable to swear or not (I managed to see his latest comment before Avant waved his scissors). Sorry throttled, I got you confused with another forum member who triggered the swear filter.

Now back on topic before we feel the pointy end of Avant's scissors again ;o)

Edited by Dynamic Dave on 03/08/2011 at 00:37

Reply | Report as offensive | Link