BBC Top Gear: Bentley GTC vs. Amtrak California Zephyr

Once upon a time, back in the late Twenties and early Thirties, before television and track days were invented, European car enthusiast types had to be a little more creative when it came to vehicle-based tomfoolery. A popular little game was to pit car against the quotidian long-distance travel option of choice of the day: the locomotive. They used to race trains, in other words.

If you saw the "Great North Race" episode (a race between XK120, Vincent Black Shadow, and A1 Peppercorn) you know how much fun this stuff is. Take a read. Meanwhile I'm going to see if they solely did a magazine article or if Clarkson and the guys did a show about it. Also, sift through the pictures, there's a few PV's on the end of the train in one pic.

http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/Car-vs ... 2012-12-18

Wait, is this an upcoming episode segment or something they did on the side?

Love Top Gear, love the Bentley, and love the Zephyr. Awesome article.

I caught the end of this show the other day on BBC America. Top Gear is on all the time, so it will probably be rerun. Check with BBC America for a day and time.

Pretty sure BBC America hasn't shown any of the newest season yet -- and they took extra time off after the last season (Hammond had another show in the interim, hopefully Jeremy just chilled). I haven't seen this ep on TV yet but look forward to it.

For Top Gear fans, the US version (on History) is pretty good. It's almost all challenges and voyages -- the in studio things they tried at the beginning were terrible TV.


BBC version did one of these against the Japanese bullet train and also one from London to mainland Europe. You can find all of these eps on line, if you try a bit. Wikipedia has a good episode guide.

do they mention track 12 in CUS ??? thats worth a show on its own .

What's up with track 12? I'm in the building a few times/month and wasn't aware of anything special on track twelve.

Same question, what's special about track 12 in CUS?

you need to take a ride on it , its a roller coaster ride for some reason . The CZ used it when i rode it , the conductor warned us before departure to hang on to our hats .

Tadman wrote:What's up with track 12? I'm in the building a few times/month and wasn't aware of anything special on track twelve.

Rough trackage. As in REALLY rough.

Hardly british at all.I can imagine "the lads" been amused by it .
I would imagine there would be some spectacular footage of the technical highway near grand junction.

For Top Gear fans, the US version (on History) is pretty good. It's almost all challenges and voyages -- the in studio things they tried at the beginning were terrible TV.

The US version is barely tolerable and usually just rips off what the real show does.

I can hardly stand to watch the Top Gear America guys. They're like c-rate shock jocks on a small town rock and roll station trying to be funny in the morning, when it's painfully obvious they aren't funny and will never be funny. It makes me think of Family Guy's "weenie and butt" or when the Always Sunny in Philly gang did a podcast. Ouch...

Jersey_Mike wrote:

For Top Gear fans, the US version (on History) is pretty good. It's almost all challenges and voyages -- the in studio things they tried at the beginning were terrible TV.

The US version is barely tolerable and usually just rips off what the real show does.

Well of course they rip off the real show, so does TG Aussie, Germany, France, etc. That's the idea of a franchise.

In their (US) challenges, they got the repartee going between them pretty good by the second season. If you only watched the first, give it another shot. If you still didn't like it, hey, that's why there are 500 channels.

Is that me, or is than an abnormally long Zephyr in the first picture?