The Grand Tour

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khevolution said:
This may be controversal but i much prefered the older top gear to the grand tour.
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Are you talking about the original Top Gear when it was a factual show testing real world everyday cars or when Clarkson took over and it got dumbed down? I actually preferred the original rather than all this scripted nonsense. Even 5th gear isn't the same anymore.

Personally I am glad to see the back of them. They took things too far and it's just three blokes dicking around over exaggerating everything they do. Yes I am a old fart and my wife would take that a stage further and say that I am a old fart that always doing old man farts (stale and rancid) but that just the way I am.
 
Glanza said:
Wonder with the push of his daughter becoming the 'face' of Drive Tribe last 6 months if she'll get a spot.
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Drive Tribe would be dead long ago if it wasn't for the Top Gear Trio link.

You have a girl who is there because of who her father is and whilst I am sure the Scottish bloke is a nice guy he has zero charisma for media. They get clicks by having to mention one of the "three" in their thumbnails for the most part.

The AutoAlex crew however seems a natural evolution of people who are friends and all the members of the team click really well. What he is doing with his channel and the sister ones is really good and they are almost becoming like old top gear. What they need is some really good writers coming up with scenarios for them to do instead of rehashing old Top Gear ones however to take it to the next level.
 
I think the biggest problem other takes on the formula face, is that they immediately just focus on the 'specials' but miss the fact that the Top Gear specials were 'special' because normal Top Gear existed and they were an organic evolution of that - there were the normal reviews, studio banter, silly segments, interesting features etc. that evolved into delivering the big specials - the 'normal' stuff was good, people grew to enjoy the relationship between the presenters (who were all genuinely interested in and knowledgeable about cars and it showed, as well arguably not really all being particularly famous beforehand) and so the specials had a level of emotional investment for the audiences by the time they started - you wanted to see them step it up from a 20 minute segment racing a train across Europe or buying 3 cheap old Lambos.

Throwing together a couple of celebs and a car reviewer or even groups like the guys for CarTrek (Tavarish, Tyler and Ed) who were car guys doesn't work because nobody gives a crap who they are, why they're there or what they're doing. It will be so difficult to repeat because everyone wants to skip to 10 seasons in and expect the audience to care like they did for these three and it won't happen.
 
I still enjoy the show but if I am honest with myself, its clear to me that the show largely ran its course quite a few years ago when they were still on the BBC. They are pretty much out of ideas now and that is fine, its time to park it in the carpark for awhile and perhaps dust the format off in a decade or two with a whole new cast.

It was probably the best thing Amazon could do with it was to make it into a few annual specials to finish off the show, I think its been a fitting end.

Whoever said they want to see a return to serious car reviews (aka, the 'magazine format'), just no. It was actually boring and doesn't carry a mainstream audience large enough to make a full television production on it. That's why it was cancelled, it was the case back in 2002 when most people still had dial up or didn't even have the internet at all and is even more the case now.

As soon as you start talking about how the crease in the door panel seamlessly morphs into the rear bumper, you lose the mainstream audience. There is no demand for a show like that on TV and YouTube has pretty much become the go to place for that kind of content.

The only reason Top Gear and TGT became the success that it was is because it was morphed into an entertainment show. Even on the new home for car based content (YouTube), there is a distinct difference between the viewership of channels which focus on serious reviews and others who have more entertaining content, the latter being significantly more popular.
 
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adam cool dude said:
Drive Tribe would be dead long ago if it wasn't for the Top Gear Trio link.

You have a girl who is there because of who her father is and whilst I am sure the Scottish bloke is a nice guy he has zero charisma for media. They get clicks by having to mention one of the "three" in their thumbnails for the most part.

The AutoAlex crew however seems a natural evolution of people who are friends and all the members of the team click really well. What he is doing with his channel and the sister ones is really good and they are almost becoming like old top gear. What they need is some really good writers coming up with scenarios for them to do instead of rehashing old Top Gear ones however to take it to the next level.
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I find most of these channels like Drive Tribe, AutoAlex, etc. have presenters who might maybe make one of a trio like Top Gear but just don't have anyone who is interesting and/or charismatic enough to carry it, often they are trying too hard to be Clarkson, etc. and it is just annoying to watch at best.

Though it is mostly "I bought a cheap car" stuff, and I think they intentionally try to avoid aping Top Gear too much, I actually find High Peak Autos the closest to a Top Gear fix - with 1-2 other presenters with genuine personality I think Matt could pull off something close to the Top Gear formula.
 
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I find Alex a bit too much tbh, Taylor is really good and rory is a bit of a non entity. Their scripting is not great, maybe they need to get the likes of Richard Porter doing it lol.

High peak auto's is a good shout though.

Ive got enough of a fix from the various motoring YT content to fill the void. TGT has been a bit meh, if it came back, id still watch it, as i would still watch TG with Harris, and someone other than Paddy. Theres so much content on YT now, great time to be alive:p
 
I do agree, no-one comes close to the old top-gear antics, autoalex is too OTT but the other TH spinoffs are pretty watchable, the Top Dead Centre lads give me the odd giggle as do 'all the gear'. I'll take a look at high peak :)
 
For me, the best road trip they did was travel across America in old beaten up cars and got chased out of a petrol station. I've watched that episode a couple of times and still enjoyed it. Or maybe the moped one too.
 
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Glanza said:
Ro0Hw06.jpeg


22 years apart...
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I like that. Wow.
 
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