Top Gear Makes Me Yearn For A Bugatti

I know very little about cars, I can admit that. In fact, I happily admit it. I think there's no shame in not knowing about cars. I can drive a stick and have been known to go 88 MPH on occasion (just to see if it would work without a flux capacitor), but before last night I had no idea what a Bugatti Veyron was.

My life has now changed forever.

Not because I'm now aware (as Wikipedia informed me) that money is lost by Bugatti on every Veyron made, but because I watched a Bugatti Veyron go head to head with a Eurofighter Typhoon in a two-mile drag race on Top Gear. That's right, it's Tuesday so we're talking Monday night television, and Monday night television is Top Gear.

I don't know what I did before I became aware of Top Gear, and I certainly don't know what I'm going to do when its season ends. Sure, How I Met Your Mother is going to come back next week, and I can't express my joy at that, but Top Gear is, well, as I've said before, quite possibly the best show on television. In fact, I'm going to say that between Top Gear and HIMYM being on next Monday night, I just might experience the perfect night of television. It will be, I imagine, televisual bliss.

But, as for last night's bit of Top Gear-genius, they had this car, a Bugatti Veyron drag race against a Eurofighter Typhoon. You see, apparently, about a year ago they raced a Bugatti Veyron against an airplane from Italy to London and the Bugatti won. As the presenters on Top Gear explain it, the RAF was a bit miffed at the notion that the car beat a plane, and suggested that perchance, just perchance, if the Bugatti went up against one of their fighters the Bugatti would lose.

I don't want to tell you what happened, it would ruin the experience, but imagine the behind the scenes bits of what took place (and I assume that the challenge did in fact take place in the way were told). The RAF called the producers of Top Gear. The RAF put forward the notion that they had an airplane that could take out a car. The RAF spent the time, money, and energy required to make this showdown work. Plus, Bugatti was so scared about what might happen, that their car might fail, that they sent not one Veyron, but two. The seriousness with which these entities took the drag race is unbelievable, and it's all for a TV show. And this TV show also featured the smallest assembly-line built car ever. Plus, Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones was on, and they tested a brand-spanking new Ferrari (actually, they had two Ferraris, even if they pretended like they only had one). What more could you ask for?

Do you understand what I'm telling you? Top Gear. You people should all be watching Top Gear. Listen, BBC America has clips of the show on their website. Go and check it out, you won't be disappointed.