Top Gear

Tonight, I get scared half to death on our track,

We host our own art exhibition and the world champion is in our reasonably priced car,

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you, everybody!

Thank you, Hello! Hello and welcome,

Welcome, everybody,

Now, a few years ago, we got very excited by this, the Noble M400,

But then the man behind the company that made it upped sticks and left

and then they stopped making it and then the whole operation just disappeared from the radar,

Now though... it's back,

This is what it's come up with,

Designed and built by some blokes I've never heard of on an industrial estate in Leicester,

it's called the M600,

Underneath the rather featureless body,

the chassis is made not from carbon fibre, but stainless steel,

The V8 that powers it is lifted from this,

Yep, It uses the same engine,

albeit with a couple of turbo chargers that Volvo use in the XC90,

So, built in Leicestershire from bits of the Industrial Revolution

and powered by the engine from a Volvo school bus,

And the cost? £200,000,

That does seem like a lot for a car that has no satellite navigation,

no climate control, no airbag,

It doesn't even have anti-lock brakes,

The men from Leicestershire say ABS is just another example

of the nanny state sticking its nose in, and that's very admirable,

But you can't help suspecting the real reason it doesn't have ABS

is because when you're operating out of a industrial unit in Leicestershire,

you can't really afford them,

There's another problem as well,

What kind of person looks at the established range of supercars

and thinks, I don't like any of them?

However, it turns out that there is a reason why you might choose a Noble,

rather than a Porsche, or a Ferrari

or a Lamborghini,

or an Aston Martin,

or a McLaren Mercedes,

You see, in terms of sheer speed, the Noble can blow all of that lot

into the middle of last week,

Let me show you what I'm on about here,

I'm currently doing 40 mph in second gear, Ready? Foot down,

And there's 60,

40-60 in one second, One!

In fourth gear, 100 to 120 in two seconds,

100 to 130 in three seconds,

It does 150 to 170 so quick that your eyeballs bounce off the back of your skull...

like squash balls!

Break it, break it! Oh, my God!

You have to push, There's very little servo assistance there,

If you push too hard, you'll lock them up because there's no ABS,

God, it's quick!

That's mind-blowingly fast,

That is properly,

head-alteringly quick,

Flat out, it'll do 225 miles an hour,

Mainly because the engine, despite the Volvo connection,

develops 650 horsepower,

The whole car only weighs 1,250kg,

And the news keeps on getting better,

This down here is exactly the same switch

that a pilot uses in a Tornado fighter-bomber to fire the missiles,

It was specifically designed so it couldn't be used by accident and that is a good thing,

Because in here, what it does

is turn the traction control off,

Argh! I wish I'd kept it on!

I really wish I'd kept it on!

The margin for error

in most supercars is actually quite wide, but in this, it really isn't,

Stop,

It's a constant nightmare,

1% too much speed going into a corner, you get understeer like that,

1% too much throttle to correct it, you've got oversteer,

1% wrong with the steering, you're going to spin,

Remember, there are no electronic driver aids to help you out,

There's no medevac chopper,

You get it wrong, you're on your own!

There is a fantastic sweet spot in this thing,

But even when you find it, you're often too terrified to enjoy the moment,

To really enjoy it and to find it regularly...

...you have to be a much better driver than I am,

I'm not really doing this justice,

Driving it fast, then, you need to be good,

But weirdly, to drive it at all, you don't,

Happily, if you wind the engine down to 550 horsepower or 450,

which you can do using this switch here,

it becomes a different animal, It becomes completely docile,

Calm, No harder to drive than... a Nissan Micra,

And like the old Noble, it's quiet and extremely comfortable,

It really does ride beautifully,

Summing this car up, then, is hard, because let's be honest,

there are several very good reasons why you shouldn't buy one,

But there is one very good reason why you should...

Losers!

APPLAUSE

So it's that fast? That edgy? That edgy?

Honestly, it's the nearest I've ever come to collecting a camera car on a shoot,

I think that was the first time I've ever seen you properly scared on our track,

Oh, I was, No, I really was,

It's not so bad when it's dry, but when it's wet you have to have the reactions of a housefly,

So not a fat, balding middle-aged man, then?

Not that, which is why we're now going to hand it over to our tame racing driver,

Some say that you shouldn't go round to his house

for your Christmas lunch, unless you enjoy the great taste of seagull,

And that the reason he always wears a helmet

is because a man once smashed him in the face with a model of Salisbury Cathedral,

All we know is he's called the Stig!

And he's off! We've had rain for the past few weeks now and we've got a dusting of snow,

Still hoping for good things, since Stig is one of the few things

that can really get to the bottom of a Noble, He loves them!

That is nice through there, Beautiful on the way out,

# In the bleak midwinter... #

Appropriate music for this weather,

Performing in the style of a Kray brother's funeral there,

A bit of twitchiness on the way in, but tasty on the way out of Chicago, now Hammerhead,

He came in very fast, understeering as I discovered earlier,

but Stiggy knows how to drive through and find that sweet spot,

# Oh, God Oh, my king... #

Right, time now to unleash the twin-turbo kick in the kidneys,

He does seem to be sawing at the wheel a lot in there,

It is a brute, this car, but the Stig isn't fazed,

That would be literally impossible, Two corners left,

He's still working hard, but the car itself looks really composed,

Coming up to Gambon,

slices through there and across the line!

APPLAUSE

OK, Here it is! Here it is,

It goes, mmm...

Hang on, you've just gone above a 599,

Yes, And above a Scuderia,

That's that fast Lambo,

That's an Enzo up there!

Past the Veyron, Past the Zonda convertible...

Whoa!

So it's expensive, but it works?

Excellent, Right,

Now we will do the news and we begin with the this -

it's a new Aston Martin, It's called the Rapide,

You can think of it as a DB9 with two extra doors,

That means there's room back here for two extra fully-grown adults

to enjoy the 470 horsepower, V12 motoring experience,

And they can enjoy exquisite details, such as these magnetically located grab handles, look,

It won't flap around when you're driving along,

All this is yours for £140,000,

Now, that is quite a bit more expensive

than Porsche's four-door, the Panamera,

but there are two very good reasons why you should choose the Aston Martin,

Firstly, and unlike the Porsche, it does look rather magnificent,

Secondly, most importantly, this is quintessentially British,

Despite the fact that it's made in Austria,

Which I think is in Germany,

OK, Now, as you can see, we are surrounded here

by a mountain of motoring-related Christmas present ideas,

Oh, yes,

We haven't got time to get through all of it, but I want to start with this,

Perfume, as we know, is a very popular Christmas gift,

Big names, Givenchy, Chanel, Now look... The RAC,

Yes, the RAC has launched this,

They're calling it Eau De Voiture,

Ooh, sounds promising!

What you do is you spray it into your car

and it makes it smell like a minicab,

It's quite strong!

My eyes!

You cretin!

The thing is, what it does, and I've really got a lot of it now,

is it's one of those smells that makes you think it's covering up other smells,

Like Femme Fresh,

LAUGHTER

Because it's a very strong smell in it's own right, but it suggests that there are other things masking,

You get notes, don't you? You get notes, undercurrents, Suggestions of...

I can smell the fruity stuff, but also a bit of stale wee,

Sick?

I can get a really beery burp,

All the things you'd expect in a minicab,

I have another gift suggestion here for Christmas,

Are you fed up with people bumping into you in a crowd situation?

Well, I have the solution here

with these small, ear-mounted human indicators, I kid you not,

What happens is, I'm walking along, say in a shopping centre,

Here I am in a shopping centre and you'll be the crowd?

There's a danger of jostling here, because I'm going to that shop on my right,

You can indicate!

So now you know and you can take evasive action,

Yes, Actually, I fancy the record shop over there,

Everybody knows what's happening, I think it's a very good gift,

So how much are they? Do we know?

Oh, I don't know, Some money,

Land Rover are taking a very pragmatic approach

to the Christmas gift idea and they have produced this,

It's the Land Rover distress whistle and it will cost you £1,50,

I just want to paint the scene for you, You're in the wilderness

in your Land Rover and you drive into an impassable gully, You become stuck,

It starts to fill up with water,

You're out of food, you're almost out of fuel,

You cannot get a signal on your mobile phone

and you're bleeding heavily from a severe abdominal wound, But it's OK!

HE BLOWS WHISTLE

If I was there with you in that situation and you produced that whistle,

I would beat you to death,

Well, yes,