critiqued it, albeit saying the lamb was ‘Castrol-oily-greasy’. Perhaps he was in a good mood because his lap turned out to be the same as Clarkson’s and second only to Jay Kay at the time. Stig fans note: the food was served by the mystery man, the first time he’d been in the studio.
Fellow celebrity chef Jamie Oliver later took his own VW Camper onto the track and The Stig belted it round the circuit while Oliver tried to prepare a salad in the back! Off-camera, The Stig then took Oliver round again in his own Maserati and succeeded in power sliding almost the entire circuit!
There have been three ‘Reasonably Priced’ cars featured since 2002. For the first seven series, a Suzuki Liana was used, which as Clarkson had revealed retailed for £9,999 precisely. Each car used is the standard road version with only the addition of necessary roll bars, safety seats and harnesses, for obvious reasons.
Apart from Gambon-esque acrobatics, the Liana also suffered a wheel falling off (when Lionel Richie and then Trevor Eve were driving), a dented boot, a broken suspension courtesy of Patrick Kielty, two destroyed clutches (David Soul) and countless mashed brake pads and tyres. For Soul’s lap, the car was redecorated in Starsky & Hutch styling with a police flashing beacon and the infamous white stripe down the side. On morethan one occasion, two Lianas were used and some interviews even comprised footage of both vehicles (although the actual lap times were from a single-car lap).
When the Doctor Who actor Christopher Eccleston came on the show, he was allowed to drive an automatic Liana as he did not have a manual licence. Worse still, when Johnny Vegas came along, he hadn’t even passed his test at all and so he was given ‘L’ plates! According to the excellent fan-site, www.jeremyclarkson.co.uk, in its entire service the Liana covered 1,600 laps of the circuit and had its tyres and brakes changed 400 times.
The faithful Liana was replaced for the eighth series by a Chevrolet Lacetti, again retailing at around the £10,000 mark. With the lap time leaderboard now wiped clear and due to the intense competition this part of the show now attracted, the rules for celeb times were tightened, with only five practice laps allowed before a final timed lap was taken. The slowest-ever lap in this model was by Jimmy Carr, who had previously held second place in the Liana behind Ellen MacArthur, but in the Chevrolet he span off and crawled in at a snail-like 2 minutes 8.91 seconds. Billie Piper’s lap was deemed ‘incomplete’ by The Stig, who said she had not completed all the corners: after Clarkson asked the Top Gear audience, however, they allowed her time to stand.
Then, at the start of Series 15, the Lacetti was replaced by a Kia cee’d (usually referred to by Clarkson as the ‘Cee Apostrophe D’). Rather than simply explain that they had replaced the previous car, in true Top Gear fashion the team parked the Chevrolet Lacetti under a pair of 550-feet chimneys at a Northfleet cement works and blew up the monstrous columns while the entire carnage was filmed.
Contrary to the generalisation that is ‘The Thespian Zone’, the fastest star to date across all three Reasonably Priced Cars is the mega-moviestar Tom Cruise, who appeared in Series 15, Episode5 during the summer of 2010. He lapped the circuit in the Cee Apostrophe D in 1.44.2, pipping his fellow guest – and co-star in the movie Knight And Day – Cameron Diaz by one second. Following Cruise’s blistering success, there were many internet rumours saying the time had been fixed so as to pander to the Hollywood heartthrob’s profile, an accusation strongly denied by the Top Gear producers. There is no evidence to suggest this: indeed, the lap was witnessed by many outside of the core backroom staff plus there are numerous stopwatches, cameras all synched up and even staff on certain parts of the track to ensure no one cuts a corner.
Andy Wilman pointed
Fellow celebrity chef Jamie Oliver later took his own VW Camper onto the track and The Stig belted it round the circuit while Oliver tried to prepare a salad in the back! Off-camera, The Stig then took Oliver round again in his own Maserati and succeeded in power sliding almost the entire circuit!
There have been three ‘Reasonably Priced’ cars featured since 2002. For the first seven series, a Suzuki Liana was used, which as Clarkson had revealed retailed for £9,999 precisely. Each car used is the standard road version with only the addition of necessary roll bars, safety seats and harnesses, for obvious reasons.
Apart from Gambon-esque acrobatics, the Liana also suffered a wheel falling off (when Lionel Richie and then Trevor Eve were driving), a dented boot, a broken suspension courtesy of Patrick Kielty, two destroyed clutches (David Soul) and countless mashed brake pads and tyres. For Soul’s lap, the car was redecorated in Starsky & Hutch styling with a police flashing beacon and the infamous white stripe down the side. On morethan one occasion, two Lianas were used and some interviews even comprised footage of both vehicles (although the actual lap times were from a single-car lap).
When the Doctor Who actor Christopher Eccleston came on the show, he was allowed to drive an automatic Liana as he did not have a manual licence. Worse still, when Johnny Vegas came along, he hadn’t even passed his test at all and so he was given ‘L’ plates! According to the excellent fan-site, www.jeremyclarkson.co.uk, in its entire service the Liana covered 1,600 laps of the circuit and had its tyres and brakes changed 400 times.
The faithful Liana was replaced for the eighth series by a Chevrolet Lacetti, again retailing at around the £10,000 mark. With the lap time leaderboard now wiped clear and due to the intense competition this part of the show now attracted, the rules for celeb times were tightened, with only five practice laps allowed before a final timed lap was taken. The slowest-ever lap in this model was by Jimmy Carr, who had previously held second place in the Liana behind Ellen MacArthur, but in the Chevrolet he span off and crawled in at a snail-like 2 minutes 8.91 seconds. Billie Piper’s lap was deemed ‘incomplete’ by The Stig, who said she had not completed all the corners: after Clarkson asked the Top Gear audience, however, they allowed her time to stand.
Then, at the start of Series 15, the Lacetti was replaced by a Kia cee’d (usually referred to by Clarkson as the ‘Cee Apostrophe D’). Rather than simply explain that they had replaced the previous car, in true Top Gear fashion the team parked the Chevrolet Lacetti under a pair of 550-feet chimneys at a Northfleet cement works and blew up the monstrous columns while the entire carnage was filmed.
Contrary to the generalisation that is ‘The Thespian Zone’, the fastest star to date across all three Reasonably Priced Cars is the mega-moviestar Tom Cruise, who appeared in Series 15, Episode5 during the summer of 2010. He lapped the circuit in the Cee Apostrophe D in 1.44.2, pipping his fellow guest – and co-star in the movie Knight And Day – Cameron Diaz by one second. Following Cruise’s blistering success, there were many internet rumours saying the time had been fixed so as to pander to the Hollywood heartthrob’s profile, an accusation strongly denied by the Top Gear producers. There is no evidence to suggest this: indeed, the lap was witnessed by many outside of the core backroom staff plus there are numerous stopwatches, cameras all synched up and even staff on certain parts of the track to ensure no one cuts a corner.
Andy Wilman pointed
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