And on that bombshell, Amazon’s motoring show has come to an end. Which means there’s no The Grand Tour or Top Gear to watch, nor a clear prospect of either returning, for the first time in yonks.
There have been times we’ve been without either show in the past two decades, but this time feels different and, I think, important. Not just to car geeks like you and me: there are car shows and videos out there for us, of course – ours included.
But if you will excuse the modesty, I think we/they talk to a specialist audience.
Autocar occupies a specialist space on the newsstand; Top Gear and The Grand Tour are the ones that make headlines in national newspapers, the ones that talk to people who don’t otherwise consume car ‘content’.
In a world of village music society gigs, they’re the Proms. Which means that the casual TV viewer isn’t currently getting a motoring fix.
And I’m a bit worried about that. I think the populace has more affection for cars than many in the TV business realise. On Ben Collins’ (#2 Stig) podcast recently, Andy Wilman, the erstwhile producer of The Grand Tour and Top Gear, said the BBC liked having the latter because it spoke to an audience that the national broadcaster didn’t otherwise really understand and took that responsibility out of its hands.
In fairness, the BBC remained committed to its car show and hadn’t intended Top Gear’s current hiatus. But with it gone and no Grand Tour, the future of mainstream car TV feels to me perilous in a way that it hasn’t before.
Cars occupy an inordinate amount of space and time in people’s lives, and it’s not just us enthusiasts who have a real affection for them.
The average Brit spends almost an hour a day travelling, and nearly 80% of the miles they travel are in a car, which means many adults spend as much time driving as they do cooking.
Could you imagine wondering when the next mainstream cookery show was going to arrive?
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Topgear was on the slide in the Clarkson era,it became laddish, about Clarkson roasting the other two, and then when they finally got snapped up for the £43 million Amazon shelled out I was happy to see Clarkson and Co go from terrestrial Tv, as for other Car shows I'm sure most of us watch two or three on Satellite, Fifth gear for one is a good show with good presenters and subjects we want to know about, and current Topgear in temporary hiatus ( because of the Flintoff crash saga) the beeb hasn't got a motor oriented show about cars now.
Personally I'm glad both are gone as the legacy of these shows is making car content too similar and conservative. While the Hammond May and Clarkson Top Gear was entertaining when it arrived, looking back at some of the episodes now, they're woefully boring with way to much filler of the three of them farting around rather than getting on with the job.
So maybe with a little distance, we'll get some interesting new formats with a bit more flair, less juvaile public schoolboy whining about Labour governments and speed cameras and a bit more attention on cars.
I think with youtube content, podcasts etc there is far more car content available than ever before and in many cases to a very high standard. I don't think Top Gear and The Grand Tour were proper motoring programmes certainly towards the end of their respective lives. They were just idiotic buggering about in ridiculous situations.
Nowadays we have the interweb for our car fixes.