Top Gear/Headscratchers

""...nevertheless, we all felt that we would cause, at worst, a ripple of offence no deeper than that which might be generated among the residents of Cornwall by three visitors driving their cars through Truro with “Cream teas are rubbish” painted down the sides.""
 * Isn't white Stig (or one of the drivers) Schumacher? I rember the Stig taking off his helmet once.
 * The Michael Schumacher appearance was an elaborate joke. White Stig is actually three or four different guys depending on scheduling availability. Ben Collins is/was the main one, though.
 * Setting the caravan on fire was obviously a set up, as was the Dacia Sandero getting smashed but were any of these bits for real or not? I can't decide.
 * Cynics might say "all of them were set ups!" but I can believe it's genuine uselessness too.
 * I recall an interview in which they admitted that they intentionally let the caravan burn down, but the initial fire was actually an accident. They just improvised and ran with it instead of trying to put it out.
 * I can imagine that it was intentional -- not for the ratings, but to get rid of the caravan. Recall the time they put one on the target of "car darts" just for giggles.
 * The 'wrong' train in Vietnam (Really?)
 * Probably real.
 * Hammond's Toyota rolling down the sand dune (Really??)
 * Probably staged.
 * Definitely staged. C'mon, Hammond forgetting to put the brake on? Hammond hopping out and going round the back of his car (to make sure he doesn't accidentally get run over) rather than just shouting across? Unlikely to say the least. But at least it's understandable why he didn't want to risk a tumble (and I don't just mean his high speed crash - that was a very steep dune, and Hammond's car was practically pieces).
 * You conveniently left out the part about him recently suffering a severe bout of altitude sickness. You make some rather poor choices when your brain has suffered lost of oxygen.
 * But both of the others had suffered as well. More likely that it was staged because an off-camera inspection revealed that the Land Cruiser wasn't safe enough to descend in
 * May's old Ford Capri breaking down, so he has to drive the Marina (Convenient!)
 * Probably real.
 * Agreed, probably real. The penalty car has always been something lurking in the background, and I doubt the guys would actually want to put it to use if they could help it.
 * Jumping the Renault into the harbour (More likely to be an empty shell?)
 * Definitely staged. Probably didn't have Ross Kemp in the back for that one, either
 * By that I meant was it a real car. Would Renault really let them chuck one of their press cars in a harbour. And would Belfast council be impressed by what technically is a very bad case of littering?
 * Given the attention that an appearance on Top Gear generates, maybe they thought it was worth it?
 * The press coverage after the stunt was filmed implied it was a real car rather than a shell.
 * Clarkson's Lancia catching fire (Very funny!)
 * Possibly real. It is Jezza we're talking about here.
 * And it's a Lancia. Love them, but.... yeah.
 * Being unaware of that massive dam in Romania, because it's dark (Possible?)
 * Very probably real.
 * I'm not so sure. They'd probably have a look around to figure out whether they really were in a dead end road, and when they found that dead end was a huge concrete wall, they would have figured something was up. But then again, their reactions in the morning were pretty convincing.
 * My guess is they were aware that there was a wall there, but didn't realize just how high up it went until the morning.
 * As far as I know they didn't sleep in their cars that night. I was all staged. The dam is filmed from up above, therefore they knew it was there, because they set up all the equipment before filming the wake-up scene. Also if you noticed, the accident scene is filmed from a nearby hill while standing still. Same thing as with the dam.
 * May's stereo being glued up (In fact, all the tricks they play on James while he's 'away')
 * An outtake where Clarkson tells May he's holding the remote hostage makes this one seem plausible too.
 * This Troper has read an interview with one of the production crew of Top Gear, which touched on the pranks. According to that, the hosts are even meaner to each other with their pranks off the air than they are on the air, and the vast majority are definitely real.
 * The cast are good friends IRL, so pranking is not unexpected. And they make a LOT of money, it's not like it's a major setback.
 * Someone said the Alabama incident was staged, leading me to believe it probably was...but how the hell do you make up something like that?
 * According to an article Richard wrote for the Times, it was very much not staged-they simply couldn't imagine they would garner such a reaction from the locals.


 * It's a believable reaction. A Top Gear Magazine road test of muscle cars in the US mentions a Harley-Davidson rider confronting the writers in a layby and pulling a gun on them because they overtook him! It's a similar culture clash to the TV episode - in the UK the biker might curse at the car driver or stop and a try and pick a fight but in the southern US the biker grabs his handgun - in the article the British writers were admiring the unintentional irony of somebody waving a gun their face shouting "you tried to kill me!"
 * The various lights out through putting out the fire with Pussy drink on the first episode 16 episode. (i can see this going both ways, as it might be difficult to get all those events to occur together in the way they did, but at the same time, they did seem like a strange combination to occur together.)
 * Clarkson losing control of his mine-sweeping machine in the demolition challenge. Real or faked?
 * I say faked. It's not hard setting up a shot with him looking bewildered and edit it so it looks as the machine is running by itself.
 * Rupert Grint held the track record in the Kia for a while. But what Just Bugs Me is WE WANT TO SEE HIM AND/OR THE STIG GO AROUND THE TRACK IN HIS ICE CREAM TRUCK!!!
 * The outrage over the Stig outing. Was there ever this much rage when Perry McCarthy came out as Stig the First?
 * The original black Stig wasn't a massive money maker, since the white stig came out all kinds of shoddy merchandise came out making massive amounts of money for the show. Then suddenly the guy in the helmet wants some "recognition" for his work and you've got a bunch of worried people over the implications. Or failing that after Black Stig revealed himself a very strict contract was drawn up (which the original didn't have) which made the Beeb/producers feel that they every right to kick up a stink.
 * Two things that bugged me about the Ayrton Senna tribute:
 * No mention whatsoever of his close friendship with Gerhard Berger? They toe the line to Heterosexual Life Partners sometimes, for crying out loud!
 * Okay, logically, I know why Clarkson claimed Lewis Hamilton was Senna's biggest fan. A) Clarkson's biased toward his fellow countrymen, B) Hamilton is a big Senna fan, and C) McLaren would probably only let Senna's championship winning car out if one of their drivers drove it, and going back to B, Hamilton probably jumped at the chance. But. Seriously? Did Clarkson forget Berger, did he forget Senna's protege Barrichello, did he forget, oh I don't know, Senna's nephew, Bruno? Surely at the very least his nephew has a bigger claim to being his biggest fan.
 * As you've already mentioned, it's likely because McLaren would only let the MP4-4 be driven by one of their drivers, in fact, the whole exercise was probably done with help from McLaren. Also, Lewis is well known seeing as he is an F1 World Champion driving for Mc Laren, something alot of people still associate Senna with. Something that McLaren are known to exploit, especially since their other driver, Jenson Button is a big fan of Senna's rival Alain Prost, as evidenced by the videos McLaren of the two fawning over the MP4-4 used by Senna and Prost during the 1988 season.
 * As of November 2010 (When the comment is being made), we've seen shots (or at least the shots exist in the internet) of the Top Gear presenters driving into and through Israel, using cars with Georgian liscense plates. Bringing up the question, what route would they use? If driving, they'd have to to go through either Iraq or Syria at some point, Iraq is definitely unsafe, and Syria seems like it may be a bit iffy. It is possible that the cars aren't actually from Georgia, or course, but it does seem kind of strange in any case. (Obviously, this will all get answered in a few months when the show comes out.)
 * To Explain this: The Cars are from Georgia (as the Israelis wouldn't let Iraqi cars in), but the challenge starts in Kurdistan, loops (after a staged detour to the Iranian border) through Turkey to avoid Mosul, then strikes through Syria and Jordan to get to Israel.
 * As was mentioned in the show, parts of Iraq are reasonably safe. Upon crossing the border into Turkey, the presenters are handed a note from a man in a white coat (as is customary for Top Gear challenges) reading "You idiots. You have escaped from an area in which there is not war, into an area in which there is war."
 * (Original Poster here), Yes, I did see the episode, and as expected in the first paragraph, all was explained. (Although it wasn't quite what i was expecting.)
 * On the Top Gear criticism wikipedia page, plus some other locations, I read about the burqas in the middle East episode, environmental worries about the salt flats, etc. How do these criticisms seen enough to get mentioned, but not any critiscism of cutting their way through some of the rainforest in the Bolivia episode?
 * This is the Amazon Rainforest we're talking about, which can consume an entire ancient temple in under a year. They were not deforesting it by merely cut a footpath through, and as seen when they woke up, they camped on a game-trail/footpath that was already established.
 * May also mentions in the DVD Commentary they traveled along existing roads for the most part, and any trees they removed were already dead or dying. In addition, had they not built the bridge across the gulley, someone from the nearby village certainly would have, as the earlier bridge for the road had collapsed shortly before their arrival.
 * I've also heard similar arguments for the salt flats episode. (The main issue is not so much whether the criticisms are legitimate, as much as that it seems odd that one of these gets more attention than the other.)
 * Not really a headscratcher, more of an observation: The Middle East special would have been quite a bit more "interesting" if it had been done in 2011. (Of course, they probably would have switched ot something else if the plans broke that way.)
 * How in the bejeebus do they get insurance for this show??
 * That's probably what the insurance company wants to know.
 * Series 16 has one of the few examples of the insurance breaking down - they had a Ferrarri 250 GTO (Total production: 39 in 1962-64) on the show, but they could not afford the insurance to have Clarkson take it around the track.
 * They are all above-average drivers when they want to be, and their test track isn't very difficult to begin with.
 * Yes, the average show isn't that dangerous. But driving on the Yungas Road, where the road under Jeremy's car literally starts to crumble beneath him and send him very nearly down the cliff? Driving through Iraq? Taking their ridiculous snowbine over a frozen lake and having the ice give out beneath them? Driving to the North Pole where they could have had all manner of calamitous events happen to them and the crew? Driving up to an ACTIVE VOLCANO? Even the above example of the Ferrarri 250 GTO, that's more because they couldn't afford what could happen to the CAR, not to Jeremy. I can accept that some of the more tense moments are staged and the danger played up for laughs, but still!
 * What is it about Top Gear and burning caravans? The hosts went on a caravan holiday together, and Clarkson burned down the caravan. The hosts build their own caravans and Hammond burned his caravan. The hosts build a train out of caravans and one of them was burned down.
 * It's no secret that the team does not like caravans.
 * And are completely incompetent cooks, which is probably why "cook in your caravan" is such a favorite of the producers. (Even if, by some miracle, nothing burns down, they're going to grouse the entire time for sure.)