The Top Gear Story - The 100% Unofficial Story of the Most Famous Car Show... In The World. Martin Roach
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institution, the so-called ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’. The premise was simple enough: each week, a famous face would take a cheap and cheerful car around the official Top Gear track, with their respective times posted on a lap time board. Initially introduced merely as a fun piece to feature some famous faces, it was also a clever way to segue in guest appearances without the celebrity just crassly plugging their new book or film.
The first-ever ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ was the comedian Harry Enfield. His appearance was pre-empted by Clarkson saying that normally when comedians make the big time, they go out and buy supercars yet Enfield had instead bought a Vauxhall Cavalier Convertible (which was hauled into the studio). He then swapped it for a Rover and this in turn was later exchanged for a Metro. At the time, Enfield was working the same circuit as comedians such as Rowan Atkinson (McLaren F1) and Steve Coogan (Ferrari 355). Inspired by such modest car taste, Clarkson announced the new weekly feature. He revealed that when searching for the ‘Reasonably Priced Car’, Hyundai had refused, so too had Daewoo and Nissan, but then Suzuki said, ‘Have a Liana’ – which was £9,999 on the road. Clarkson described this as the most beautiful car he had ever seen.
First of all, however, Clarkson, Hammond and Jason Dawe all crammed into the Liana to do a lap of the Top Gear track to test out the vehicle. They recorded a time of 1.50 seconds, even with three adults on board. For the celebrities themselves, on the day The Stig would show them the racing lines and coach them around the track before each of them was allowed several attempts at a lap time, although the fastest would be (genuinely) kept a secret until they were interviewed in the studio by Clarkson.
Enfield was not so quick: to this day he remains one of the slowest stars, with a lamentable time of 2.01. To his credit, as the opening ‘star’, he was the fastest guest celebrity on the leaderboard albeit for one week (behind The Stig and the presenters). However, with the very next episode in late October 2002, when supercar collector and accomplished racer Jay Kay of Jamiroquai fame came on the show, it quickly became apparent that for some celebrities this was not just a bit of fun. Kay has a well-documented fleet of supercars and was known to be a talented and naturally fast driver. First off, he chatted with Clarkson about how he felt his love of cars could be traced back to his famous mother’s transient lifestyle (she was the brilliant jazz singer Karen Kay) and how he therefore spent much of his childhood on tour, travelling the UK with her. He then rattled off a dream list of cars that would make most men salivate – a Merc Pullman, Ferrari 550, a Lambo Miura SC and 360 Spider, an Aston Martin DB5, etc.
Then Jay Kay did his lap. Coming the week after Harry Enfield posted such a slow opening gambit, everyone expected Kay to handsomely beat that mark. And that’s exactly what he did: his time of 1.48.3 was only two seconds behind The Stig and came complete with a fancy handbrake turn to finish! Delighted, he punched the air in triumph (notably, this was in front of a sparse studio audience, which in the early series were only placed in front of the presenters’ chairs rather than the latter-day set-up of a 360-degree crowd). Seeing Jay Kay so excited was the moment when ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ became not just an entertaining TV slot, but a national sport.
In the second series, however, ultra-tall supermodel Jodie Kidd astonished everyone by taking three-tenths off Jay Kay’s time, even though she could barely fit in the tiny Suzuki Liana. Perhaps viewers shouldn’t have been surprised as she was in fact a veteran of the ultra-fast American Gumball Rally and even drove a Maserati Spyder at home. She compared driving fast on the lap to being on a horse, in that it gave her the same adrenaline rush. Later, The Stig revealed that in between corners, Kidd could be heard making ‘Giddy up!’ sounds.
The Stig told Clarkson with few notable exceptions, pretty much all the celebs he was coaching were highly competitive and keen to win (he also later revealed that in his opinion the most difficult celebrity was Tara Parker-Tomkinson as he felt she wasn’t a very good listener). However, not all celebrities are so accomplished and much of the fun of this segment is when the celeb driver is utterly useless. The late great Richard Whiteley ambled in at a woefully slow 2.06 – in fact, both he and Terry Wogan were beaten by blind Bosnia war veteran Billy Baxter, accompanied by Clarkson directing him from the passenger seat.
But perhaps the most infamous early lap was by seasoned actor Michael Gambon towards the end of Series 1. A fan of the show from years back, despite his Shakespearian pedigree and English gentleman appearance he actually owns a Ferrari 348 (a famously difficult prancing horse to drive). He is a considered petrol-head, even taking his skills as far as flying planes and having an engineering workshop at home. Gambon said that he thoroughly enjoyed being trained by The Stig and revealed that the mystery racing driver talked in a French accent. When Gambon did his lap, he said that he didn’t even know there was a camera in the car and the look on his face – like that of an angry taxi driver – suggested he wasn’t fibbing.
He nearly came off the track several times but the most infamous moment came on the last turn before the finish line, when he lifted up onto two wheels, nearly rolling the car over altogether (Tom Cruise and Michael McIntyre would later do the same). Forever after, that part of the track has been named ‘Gambon Corner’ in his honour. His time of 1.55 was a wet lap, which left him rather lowly on the board. Interestingly, however, although his two-wheel antics on the corner became the stuff of Top Gear legend, The Stig later said Gambon had had the best appreciation of racing lines of anyone in the series thus far. However, Clarkson later referred to the part of the leaderboard with times of 1:51 or slower as the ‘Thespian Zone’, as there were so many classically trained actors posting such slow times down there.
Over time, the ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ feature has become a longer interview with the celebrity in question. Occasionally, however, the presenters make a diversion inspired by their guest. One such silly aside came with the foul-mouthed, but ultra-passionate chef Gordon Ramsay in Series 1, Episode 9. In the studio, Clarkson and Ramsay bemoaned women drivers and vegetarians before Jeremy announced that they had thought of a cunning plan to avoid having to eat dire motorway service station food (a pet hate of his). He’d worked out that if you taped certain cuts of meat to the engine itself and left them under the bonnet on your journey, they would cook as you drove along, thus avoiding the need to pay for vile service station food. He suggested they could even instruct the public on cooking times – for example, a rack of lamb might take two hours at 3000rpm.
You could see Ramsay’s face drop as he then realised Clarkson had not only cooked food under the bonnets of three cars on the Top Gear test track, but also clearly wanted him to taste it. To Ramsay’s credit, he tested the food with real enthusiasm and even 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 more than 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