(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Fire
- I thought that was going in then.
- There are so many memories for me that relate to Top Gear.
Like back when I was in college,
I would go to the cafeteria right before close.
I'd asked for some free food that I could pack
in some sort of like old Tupperware.
I would go home, grab some corn chips
and a can of old frijole beans and some
off-brand cheese.
I throw it all on a plate, right?
Pour the nearly expired chicken onto the cheesy goodness
after putting them in the microwave for a minute and a half.
Right. I'd make enough for two people.
I'd run downstairs with my roommate, Michael Shaw,
we'd watch two episodes of Top Gear.
While trying to sort through some IS240 homework,
which was awesome,
except for the fact that IS240 absolutely sucked.
All right, I did not like the class.
I don't remember the Excel formulas
and nothing was very fun.
But top gear was one of the few moments of genuine,
like happiness and proper automotive education
I had with cars as I was going through college.
And it was probably one of the only times I ever received
some humor and some actual joy while going
through the late
nights of being at UW Eau Clair.
And it was just a properly good show.
And then it just disappeared kind of,
sort of, but not really.
I'm Alex, alex.fi on Instagram,
and today we're going to be taking a look
about where top gear actually came from,
who is actually responsible for its success and just what
exactly happened to it because it may not be what you think.
(upbeat music)
New hoodie, wheels, tires, suspension, S2000,
Apple Watch that notifies me that my heart rate is too high.
Dakota got a haircut and he hates it.
Top Gear ladies and gentlemen, do us a favor and subscribe.
I promise our channel won't prematurely
end without explanation.
Like we're about to explain.
And if you're looking for wheels and tires,
please go check out our wheel brand that
we have just launched that can get
to your door in as little as seven days.
Our own wheel brand is called Artisa ArtFormed Wheels.
And of course, if that's not enough,
we've got a full build giveaway.
Plus $10 000 cash.
We got like a whole bunch of stuff going on right now,
but at the end of the day,
be sure to check it over at fitmentindustries.com,
scroll down because there's a lot of stuff on the homepage
so can learn a little bit about it.
I see what you guys do on there.
You don't scroll.
We need you to scroll just a little bit more
so that you can learn a little bit more about
what we're up to and if not that,
at least drop a comment on your favorite episode of
Top Gear in the comments section below, so we can reminisce.
My favorite one was when they took the Hilux.
Anyway, Top Gear started actually way before the names
of James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson
became household automotive personalities.
The initial show was actually founded in 1977 and it was
initially purposed to educate automotive consumers on driver
and safety ratings of OEM vehicles.
In short, it was kind of a sort of really just boring.
Okay, BBC would bring in some figureheads to kickstart
the show, to really try to expand its audience
right out of the gate,
including female by the name of Angela Rippon,
to help garner views on this new program.
1977 was kind of a big deal specifically because it
was an automotive industry.
Now it was this initial program that ultimately
spawned the Top Gear magazine.
Now, you know, magazine didn't come first,
magazine came second.
As the automobile increased in demand
and the market segmentation along with it.
So two did Top Gears content.
Remember 1977 was a hot minute ago, almost 50 years.
Damn. And while the show originally was more
educational than it was humorous,
it did evolve over the generations and the popularity
of the show grew with it,
almost way faster than anybody actually imagined.
Snippets of humor began to envelop the scripts.
Personalities stayed relatively the same,
but did experience some pretty good turnover,
pretty consistently.
Specifically going into the 80s and
up until the introduction of our very own Jeremy Clarkson
to the series in the late 1980s.
86, 87, 88 is when he kind of started popping
his good old fluffy hair into the camera.
Jeremy Clarkson's personality further spurred controversy,
but now with who he was just yet,
you see the show was already in the hot seat prior to
the hot head, as some might say.
Top Gear was receiving plenty of complaints in regards to it
encouraging illegal driving behavior.
And the UK was angry that it didn't actively talk about
environmental issues related to passenger vehicles.
Remember all this stuff that was happening with the EPA in
the United States, that was also happening elsewhere.
How dare you? Okay.
Thankfully it's the same as it is now, but back then,
I assume people sent in letters or post-ins versus just
putting comments on Tik-Toks and YouTube videos,
talking about how people don't care about the environment,
but hey, that's a conversation for a different day.
However though it didn't stop top gear from pulling in the
second highest views in their program list with BBC.
People absolutely adored the show.
Unfortunately, the interest in boundaries that
Top Gear faced with a big company,
BBC watching them started to cause some more turnover.
Essentially, if you guys don't know,
BBC holds themselves to a very high standard
and we'll just fire people if they're not doing
a very good job, it was a high expectation space.
And BBC also doesn't play around when it comes to viewership
and ratings, you got to keep yourself at the top,
or you getting axed, okay.
And it didn't help when presenters got pulled
over for like drunk driving and things like that,
because back then that just kind of sort of happened
and it wasn't a good thing.
And just so we're clear,
there were a lot of presenters during the show's timeline.
There's Tom Coyne, Noel Edmonds, Frank Page, Sue baker,
Tom Boswell, William Woollard, Chris Geoffey, Tony Mason,
Tiff Needell, Jeff Bentley,
Jeremy Clarkson from 1988 to 1999 and then he left.
Mickey Fox, Quintin Wilson, Michelle Newman,
Steve Berry, Adrian Simpson, Jason Barlow,
Kate Humble, James May for a single year actually,
Brendan Coogan, Julia Bradbury, Vicki Henderson,
Andy Wilman and there were a few more
that made it as a special appearance on the Top Gear show.
And that was just over the course of about 20 years.
And while the original Top Gear show would end in 2001 and
get spun off into a different series on
channel five known as the fifth gear,
the hole was left in the automotive journalism world for
some sort of snarky British commentary about cars.
That simply weren't good.
People like the new show,
but it wasn't inherently did just have that edge.
And there was no genuineness until now or whatever
Jeremy says, you know, he's got the voice,
and teeth and the face does it way better
than everybody else.
Top Gear would come back in 2002 thanks to the
beautiful bald bastard, Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman.
The show would repair with all the good pieces
of the old show with a little extra spice
to keep BBC on their toes in regards to well,
just about everything.
They were very free, which is a little bit of a problem.
The shows design work and content strategy was reinvigorated
to capture both young and old enthusiasts
in a way that began to align with
the explosion of the online internet media.
If you remember Soulja Boy, all right,
and his claim to fame with online media,
Top Gear would be that same thing
over in the automotive space.
And while the show started with just Richard Hammond,
Jeremy Clarkson, and a man by the name of James Dawe,
James May would enter into the second season to replace the
other James and hold the line until Jeremy's dismissal.
Okay. Now for those that don't know,
Top Gear is still very much a present show with its own
unique styling and content.
They're still making stuff they're not dead,
maybe emotionally to people, but not actually.
You can even watch the U.S. version
if that's your kind of thing.
I don't know whose whose thing it is, but it's a thing.
But after 2015 top gear for people like you
and people like me just kind of sort of disappeared
from a focus or attention or any sort of limelight.
So what exactly happened?
In 2015 BBC had become quite, let's call it worried,
with Jeremy's apparent behavior.
He had been filmed using some pretty inappropriate verbiage
when picking two cars,
which ultimately made it onto a news channel to which his
response caused a plea of forgiveness.
And this wasn't inherently the first time Jeremy may have
been caught doing something like this.
There was an episode in Burma where another
remark had been made, publicly, during filming,
of the show to which BBC placed Clarkson on a final strike.
There were license plate issues that they put into shows
that people didn't catch until after it went live.
They were painting words on cars that
may have upset quite a few different groups,
and ultimately Top Gear was getting over the wire of what
was acceptable, and BBC continued to try
and reign it in because at the end of the day,
the show was a monumental success.
So they didn't just want to stop building the show.
I mean, at the end of the day, money is money.
But according to allegations,
Clarkson proceeded to get into a verbal and physical
altercation with a Top Gear producer
by the name of Oisin Timon.
And that was ultimately what broke the camel's back.
Now people argue, but what the argument was about,
but that really doesn't matter.
It wasn't necessarily the altercation itself that caused the
divorce between Jeremy and the producers,
but an ever increasing laundry list of issues that placed
BBC in the limelight of ethical television broadcasting.
And it was a rough time.
BBC was actually getting on the hook for
a lot of trouble and it was because of Jeremy
that they just didn't want to do it anymore.
And it didn't take long for Top Gear to spiral into a frenzy
with new personalities coming into the mix after they booted
Jeremy and James and Richard proceeded to follow.
However, I will say this
and I will say this with confidence.
I love watching Chris Harris. Okay.
He's got the genuine energy of a
car enthusiast and has, in my opinion,
rightfully delivered an excellent amount of content that
I've come to watch consistently on YouTube.
I enjoy him.
He deserves the mention, you guys, if you don't know him,
go watch his stuff. It's absolutely incredible.
The rest of it, though, that's up to you.
Top Gear had then regressed into swapping personalities
depending on their mojo with each other and continues
to do so, even to this day.
There has been more turnover like we talked about in the
original Top Gear with more recent reports,
showing a steady incline and performance of the show.
It's still isn't back to where it used to be.
Now I'm talking about Top Gear UK.
I don't really watch USA, different conversation,
different time.
James May, Richard Hammond, and our very own Jeremy Clarkson
would obviously then go off to Amazon to conduct their own
show known as The Grand Tour,
which is another automotive show.
And it was pretty enjoyable. I liked it.
I would say some of maybe the forced candor and arguments
may have been a little bit much in season one,
but it is still a really great show and it's not
inherently the point, Top Gear had changed.
And a lot of it was cause the personalities
that had left the channel got into a little bit of trouble.
Top Gear had become a show that millions of people watched,
like millions almost so much so that it had
become its own everything.
Movies, DVDs, shows things like that.
Magazines, special editions, live streams, et cetera.
And I know for a fact that plenty of automotive information,
opinions and cars purchased were based on the feedback of
those iconic three in the 2000's and into the 2010's.
I used to look up the review of my own car with Top Gear
before buying it because I thought it was the coolest thing
ever that Jeremy Clarkson reviewed a 3000GT VR4.
I bought it myself, Jeremy did a '92 VR4,
and ultimately I bought the car that afternoon,
even though I didn't even know manual.
My dad was very confused on why I bought that car.
The point is Top Gear stood for something for enthusiasts.
It had the feeling of genuine friends,
enjoying genuine cars.
It related to us as we got into the scene,
and did dumb things with our cars,
and the clean humor was something that kind of
sorta hit a sweet spot before YouTube's
digital era truly took hold.
It was like YouTube before YouTube.
And it was really enjoyable to be a part of.
You felt like you were a part of it,
and you could sit and watch their challenges
over and over because it was just fun to do.
And that sort of energy is just a little bit gone.
Sure, there's new channels and sure,
there's even a new Top Gear
but the feeling of smiling because of what it used to
genuinely be just doesn't seem to be there anymore.
It seems to only be filled with the
shell of the very same thing.
But again, Chris Harris, bang on job, like the dude,
great content, Grand Tour, it's all right,
not too bad.
And everything is still kind of moving
along on its own pace.
But the issues with what happened
to the original Top Gear is likely never,
ever going to happen again because I don't think anybody is
allowed to do what he did.
But what do you think about Top Gear?
What do you think about Top Gear USA?
Let us know below.
And of course, if you're looking for aftermarket wheels,
tires or suspension,
be sure to hit us up over at fitmentindustries.com.
I'm Alex from fitness industries, and we will see you later.
Peace.
(upbeat music)