Tuesday , March 19 2024
Bugatti! That's good television.

Top Gear Goes Where They Never Have Before

Okay fine, I wasn't going to discuss, but it sat with me all day yesterday and vexed me, so I have to talk about it.  The Bugatti Veyron, your favorite television show and mine has famously raced it against things like an Eurofighter Typhoon jet, but up until this week (in the United States anyway, which I get is somewhat behind England with the show), had never raced it around their track.  Clarkson, Hammond, and May have previously explained that Bugatti wouldn't allow it, perhaps they were scared, perhaps they were worried, perhaps they simply thought it added to the mystique of the Veyron.  Whatever the case, up until this week Top Gear had never taken the Veyron around the track.  Up until this week.

The Bugatti is now up on the Power Lap board, and, (this is a spoiler if you care about such things as the time it takes a Bugatti Veyron to go around Top Gear's track) it is not in first place.  In fact, it wasn't in first place immediately after it's lap, and then they put a second car around the track last night, a Pagani Zonda F (fast car, slow website), and that too beat the Veyron.

Watching these miracles of miracles unfold I was left with several questions.  First and foremost, and the one I think the show really should have answered but didn't – why did Bugatti finally allow Top Gear to take the Veyron around the track?  It seems like a great oversight for the show not to finally discuss – or at least make a joke about – Bugatti's finally acquiescing.  If any of you reading this watched in England, please leave a comment and let me know if they discussed it there, I have a sneaking suspicion that due to the added commercial time in the U.S. airing of the show we lost Bugatti's explanation.

My second question, after studying both the Veyron and the Zonda F with my limited car skills, is why someone would choose the Zonda F over the Veyron.  The Veyron has a greater top speed, greater horsepower, and goes from 0 to 100 and 0 to 200 km/h faster than the Zonda F.  Plus, the Veyron looks way cooler than the Zonda F.  Yes, the Zonda F looks pretty cool, but not like the Veyron, not like the Veyron at all.  The Zonda F looks solely like it belongs at a track, the Veyron looks like you could drive it around regularly.  You probably can't, but it wouldn't look out of place in your driveway. 

I know, it only wouldn't look out of place in your driveway if your home is some sort of six million dollar estate, because the Bugatti Veyron is one expensive car (calling my local dealer, they ballparked it at 1.5 million bucks).  But, let's forget price, it's wholly irrelevant to our discussion, and, after all, it's rather gauche to talk about money, isn't it? 

Okay, maybe you'd take the Zonda F because it went around the Top Gear track slightly faster than the Veyron. But that's about the only reason, isn't it?

So, anyway, there you have it, what ought to be massively big news – Top Gear took a Veyron around the track.  How can you not be excited?

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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