BF2S Forums Top Gear Season 11 Kicks off on Sunday! [Spoilers tbh]

Not long ago, we got a call from Sabine Schmitz, legendary 'Ring-mistress, official Friend of Show and – as it turned out – presenter of the German television equivalent of Top Gear.

Our programme wants to take on your programme in a series of challenges, she said.

And because she's actually a bit scary and could probably kick our heads in a bit, we were powerless to say no.

Which is why we ended up in Belgium, the country invented to provide Britain and Germany with a neutral ground on which to have a fight.

All we had to do was show these impudent Teutons what was what in off-roaders, race cars, autotests and double-decker cars.

Oh yeah, and try not to mention the war. James might have mentioned it once, but we think he got away with it...

The Nissan GT-R is clearly quite a car.

The kind of car that's built with such obsession that its tyres are filled with nitrogen so they don't suffer excessive pressure change when they get hot.

The kind of car that has an engine hand-built in a hermetically sealed room to ensure absolute precision and cleanliness.

The kind of car that got Jeremy so excited he was prepared to fly all the way to Japan to drive it.

Unfortunately, Richard and James insisted on tagging along too, so the Top Gear office came up with a very special race.

Could Clarkson in his technofest Nissan get from one side of Japan to the other before Hammond and May could do the same trip using public transport?

But not just any public transport. Japanese public transport: the most reliable and, thanks to the famous 186mph Bullet Train, the fastest mass transit network in the world.

As we said, the Nissan GT-R is clearly quite a car. But then, against that sort of adversary, it needs to be.

We've long said on Top Gear that you can't call yourself a true petrolhead unless you've owned an Alfa Romeo.

Only when you've experienced the passion, the soul and the racing pedigree of a car from the pride of Milan will you know what it is to truly love cars. It's one of the few things Jeremy, Richard and James absolutely agree on.

Right then, said the Top Gear office, if that's what you three think then you can go off and buy a sub-£1,000 Alfa each and we'll set you a series of tests to prove that what you're actually getting into here isn't passion and soul but inconvenience, heartache and a sudden mysterious puddle of greenish liquid appearing under the passenger seat.

Except in the case of Hammond's chronically ill-judged purchase, which didn't have anything under the passenger seat except a hole through which you could see the road.

Last edited by Jenspm (2008-06-19 04:06:51)