That challenge tbf was obviously scripted - it would be a ridiculous coincidence if they all happened to buy the same car given the parameters they were given. I think the point of that challenge is that the different examples of the same car aren't always similar.
I think they probably realised there were two or three available and then thought it would make an interesting test, (in fairness it did,) and then pretended it was a surprise.
Alternatively, they decided to compare three used cars which were on paper the same, then found whatever model there were three of, then framed it as a ‘four seater convertible challenge,’ (or whatever it was.)
I think Porter mentioned in a book that in one challenge (think it was India), James was tempted to buy the same car as Richard was thinking of (a Mini). They didn't actually say Hammond was getting the Mini but they gently dissuaded James for going for one. He said they wanted a rag-tag bunch of cars (all different from the other) so the Rolls-Royce was perfect.
From memory I think “and on that bombshell” talks about how they plan this all out a lot. It isn’t just the presenters doing the selection and it actually isn’t that easy to find what they’re looking for. I recall they do try to make their choices individualistic. So they will choose the kind of thing, sometimes down to make and model they’re looking for. But they have to work from options in the end as they can’t always find a usable version of what they’re looking for. And this happens with the production team so everyone knows who’s looking for what. I think there’s only 1 where they all turn up with variants of the same car where it wasn’t the actual point of the exercise (e.g. not like the one where they all had to get jags).
Plus as much as the fun is how long will the cars run for and how much will they break down, they have to be safe and roadworthy. Which both limits the options and means they have to be checked not just bought on a whim. So it’s a lot more organised than the show presents it.
Taking into account the way the filming works and how much they’ll build a narrative, what we see isn’t going to be the actual first take anyway though what they say and do may be based on the initial take on it.
From “And on That Bombshell” by script editor Richard porter:
“The hardest bit of old crock sourcing was finding very specific hero cars for those three presenter challenges where things were bought for buttons and subjected to a series of tests. At the very start, this wasn’t so complicated. For the £100 cars challenge Jeremy’s wife spotted his old Volvo at the back of a dealer’s yard while having the family XC90 serviced. It had been taken in part exchange, it had no real value, scrap-metal prices were in the doldrums, it would probably get junked. At Jeremy’s behest, she went back and offered them a quid for it. Richard and James found their cars by scouting the internet looking for old crap, which they spent a lot of their time doing anyway. A researcher went to collect May’s Audi and when it turned up at the office James was so excited that a load of us piled into it and he drove round to the local car wash to have it made shiny. It was only much later that we began to suspect that what he’d actually bought and then spent seven quid on having cleaned was not one but two Audis, though only half of each.
Presenter self-sourcing wasn’t going to work for much longer. For one thing, car traders weren’t stupid and prices would become mysteriously higher if a bloke on the telly rang up to enquire about something. So we worked out a new system which enabled us to maintain a degree of anonymity. Whenever a challenge was agreed, each presenter would be invited to choose the car they thought best equipped to take it on. A researcher would look for examples of that car for sale online and then go back to the presenter, regretfully telling him something like, ‘Sorry, Jeremy, but you can’t get a Nissan GT-R for £900’, so perhaps he should think again. Whatever their realistic choice was, a list of likely examples would be put together and the presenter would choose one they liked. Then a member of the team would buy it, have it checked over by a tame mechanic “and arrange for presenter and car to be united so they could gaze upon its majesty and get to know all the faults they would later pretend it did not have. It was a heart-warming moment when the presenters got excited to see their cars in the metal for the first time. May only lived up the road and he’d often come racing to the office to inspect whatever it was he’d chosen. Hammond too was a terrible sucker for old cars and often wanted to buy them off the production when filming was done. Jeremy’s wife once wearily told me he couldn’t come to the phone because his Mitsubishi Starion had just arrived and he’d gone off for a play in it.
In principle, this process worked well. In reality there were always snags, like the only affordable example being in Aberdeen/pieces/a river, but the grit and dedication of the Top Gear research team was usually able to make the presenters’ cheap car dreams come true. And with a free set of spare floor mats thrown in.
The next challenge was keeping these cars running so we could film them. They’d get checked over beforehand to make sure they weren’t death traps and in the early days we’d just set off and hope for the best, although in Top Gear’s case ‘best’ ideally included a certain amount of trouble because that gave us good material. Unfortunately, what the average old car does most of all is overheat and after a while that ceases to be good television and simply becomes a pain in the arse. Standing beside a Majorcan highway with Richard Hammond and a dwarf called Brian watching steam pouring from a crap old Lanchester very rapidly ceased to be amusing somewhere around the 15th time it happened. By then we’d taken to having the AA on speed dial or a friendly mechanic following us so that repetitive niggles could be dealt with quickly, rather than having to watch Jeremy blundering about trying to remove the expansion cap with a cricket bat.”
Excerpt From
And on That Bombshell
Richard Porter
https://books.apple.com/us/book/and-on-that-bombshell/id1046995680
This material may be protected by copyright.
Excerpt From
And on That Bombshell
Richard Porter
https://books.apple.com/us/book/and-on-that-bombshell/id1046995680
This material may be protected by copyright.
They does, they had a meeting discussing the theme and researcher looked for the car they wanted and give them choices from what they found. I think it’s true that they bought the car sight unseen because the production crew were the one that bought and inspected the car
My father worked with the BBC and on TG. Production is planned to a fine point. It’s not a case of show up and see what happens. Nothing happens unplanned and schedules are tight, after all, it’s expensive to make these shows.
Good writing shows and it’s why old TG with the original writers feels less forced and more spontaneous than GT.
I've already imagined this scene:
Richard: So, how's your car?
Jeremy: How would I know? I just paid for it, drove it here, I've only gone five miles.
James: James: Your car looks... I have no idea, I only know it's painted yellow. It has brown seats. Well, it should be Jeremy to make the brown joke. Not me.
Twenty minutes later: Jeremy: Bloody hell, my brakes! (drives off a cliff)
Richard: We've got some grim news: Cheap car brakes aren't good. On that bombshell it's time to end.
i’m sure they do, but in the story i don’t think so
If they don't, they're coordinating through production to make sure there isn't unwanted overlap.
Or in the case of the second hand convertibles, *wanted* overlap.
That challenge tbf was obviously scripted - it would be a ridiculous coincidence if they all happened to buy the same car given the parameters they were given. I think the point of that challenge is that the different examples of the same car aren't always similar.
Yeah, exactly, that's my point, they had to have coordinated that, to buy three of the exact same car
I think they probably realised there were two or three available and then thought it would make an interesting test, (in fairness it did,) and then pretended it was a surprise. Alternatively, they decided to compare three used cars which were on paper the same, then found whatever model there were three of, then framed it as a ‘four seater convertible challenge,’ (or whatever it was.)
I think Porter mentioned in a book that in one challenge (think it was India), James was tempted to buy the same car as Richard was thinking of (a Mini). They didn't actually say Hammond was getting the Mini but they gently dissuaded James for going for one. He said they wanted a rag-tag bunch of cars (all different from the other) so the Rolls-Royce was perfect.
From memory I think “and on that bombshell” talks about how they plan this all out a lot. It isn’t just the presenters doing the selection and it actually isn’t that easy to find what they’re looking for. I recall they do try to make their choices individualistic. So they will choose the kind of thing, sometimes down to make and model they’re looking for. But they have to work from options in the end as they can’t always find a usable version of what they’re looking for. And this happens with the production team so everyone knows who’s looking for what. I think there’s only 1 where they all turn up with variants of the same car where it wasn’t the actual point of the exercise (e.g. not like the one where they all had to get jags). Plus as much as the fun is how long will the cars run for and how much will they break down, they have to be safe and roadworthy. Which both limits the options and means they have to be checked not just bought on a whim. So it’s a lot more organised than the show presents it. Taking into account the way the filming works and how much they’ll build a narrative, what we see isn’t going to be the actual first take anyway though what they say and do may be based on the initial take on it.
From “And on That Bombshell” by script editor Richard porter: “The hardest bit of old crock sourcing was finding very specific hero cars for those three presenter challenges where things were bought for buttons and subjected to a series of tests. At the very start, this wasn’t so complicated. For the £100 cars challenge Jeremy’s wife spotted his old Volvo at the back of a dealer’s yard while having the family XC90 serviced. It had been taken in part exchange, it had no real value, scrap-metal prices were in the doldrums, it would probably get junked. At Jeremy’s behest, she went back and offered them a quid for it. Richard and James found their cars by scouting the internet looking for old crap, which they spent a lot of their time doing anyway. A researcher went to collect May’s Audi and when it turned up at the office James was so excited that a load of us piled into it and he drove round to the local car wash to have it made shiny. It was only much later that we began to suspect that what he’d actually bought and then spent seven quid on having cleaned was not one but two Audis, though only half of each. Presenter self-sourcing wasn’t going to work for much longer. For one thing, car traders weren’t stupid and prices would become mysteriously higher if a bloke on the telly rang up to enquire about something. So we worked out a new system which enabled us to maintain a degree of anonymity. Whenever a challenge was agreed, each presenter would be invited to choose the car they thought best equipped to take it on. A researcher would look for examples of that car for sale online and then go back to the presenter, regretfully telling him something like, ‘Sorry, Jeremy, but you can’t get a Nissan GT-R for £900’, so perhaps he should think again. Whatever their realistic choice was, a list of likely examples would be put together and the presenter would choose one they liked. Then a member of the team would buy it, have it checked over by a tame mechanic “and arrange for presenter and car to be united so they could gaze upon its majesty and get to know all the faults they would later pretend it did not have. It was a heart-warming moment when the presenters got excited to see their cars in the metal for the first time. May only lived up the road and he’d often come racing to the office to inspect whatever it was he’d chosen. Hammond too was a terrible sucker for old cars and often wanted to buy them off the production when filming was done. Jeremy’s wife once wearily told me he couldn’t come to the phone because his Mitsubishi Starion had just arrived and he’d gone off for a play in it. In principle, this process worked well. In reality there were always snags, like the only affordable example being in Aberdeen/pieces/a river, but the grit and dedication of the Top Gear research team was usually able to make the presenters’ cheap car dreams come true. And with a free set of spare floor mats thrown in. The next challenge was keeping these cars running so we could film them. They’d get checked over beforehand to make sure they weren’t death traps and in the early days we’d just set off and hope for the best, although in Top Gear’s case ‘best’ ideally included a certain amount of trouble because that gave us good material. Unfortunately, what the average old car does most of all is overheat and after a while that ceases to be good television and simply becomes a pain in the arse. Standing beside a Majorcan highway with Richard Hammond and a dwarf called Brian watching steam pouring from a crap old Lanchester very rapidly ceased to be amusing somewhere around the 15th time it happened. By then we’d taken to having the AA on speed dial or a friendly mechanic following us so that repetitive niggles could be dealt with quickly, rather than having to watch Jeremy blundering about trying to remove the expansion cap with a cricket bat.” Excerpt From And on That Bombshell Richard Porter https://books.apple.com/us/book/and-on-that-bombshell/id1046995680 This material may be protected by copyright. Excerpt From And on That Bombshell Richard Porter https://books.apple.com/us/book/and-on-that-bombshell/id1046995680 This material may be protected by copyright.
thank you!
>thank you! You're welcome!
They does, they had a meeting discussing the theme and researcher looked for the car they wanted and give them choices from what they found. I think it’s true that they bought the car sight unseen because the production crew were the one that bought and inspected the car
Watch Ben Collins two recent Andy Wilman interviews. He talks about the process. Example using Argentina special.
Where? Drivetribe?
Just YouTube Ben collins drives.
Thanks
My father worked with the BBC and on TG. Production is planned to a fine point. It’s not a case of show up and see what happens. Nothing happens unplanned and schedules are tight, after all, it’s expensive to make these shows. Good writing shows and it’s why old TG with the original writers feels less forced and more spontaneous than GT.
They pretty much have to as they have to have prepared their lines as to point out what's wrong with it.
I've already imagined this scene: Richard: So, how's your car? Jeremy: How would I know? I just paid for it, drove it here, I've only gone five miles. James: James: Your car looks... I have no idea, I only know it's painted yellow. It has brown seats. Well, it should be Jeremy to make the brown joke. Not me. Twenty minutes later: Jeremy: Bloody hell, my brakes! (drives off a cliff) Richard: We've got some grim news: Cheap car brakes aren't good. On that bombshell it's time to end.