Top Gear

Tonight, I find a bicycle in a river...

James annoys a dog...

and Richard jumps over a dyke.

Hello!

Hello, good evening! Hello, everybody.

Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you.

Now...

we start tonight on our track.

This is a place of screaming engines and tyre smoke.

It is a cathedral to the god of thunder and the mistress of power.

The natural home, then, for James May.

That is a selection of sporty Astons.

All of them neatly demonstrating exactly what's wrong with modern sports cars - handling.

The people who make sports cars are absolutely obsessed with it, to the exclusion of everything else,

like comfort, refinement. They just give you a racket, a load of smoke and a bad back.

That is the noise made by idiots - full of sound and fury

and signifying nothing.

The reason these Astons are so unnecessarily hard core

is this because of this place - the Nurburgring.

As soon as a car company comes here to develop a new model,

they forget about everything else except lap times,

and that is the ruination of a car.

Of course, those of you who know your Astons will be saying,

"But there is a model for you - the DB9, the most grown-up and least sporty Aston of them all."

The trouble with this, though, is, it isn't shaking my teeth out

and it's not sending me into a boiling rage about handling,

but it isn't really giving me the fizz, either.

I think this has now gone a bit too far the other way.

There's a slight whiff of old fart about it.

So, what I need is the comfort of the DB9

infused with some of the power of the red-hot DBS.

And it looks like my prayers may have been answered...

with this, the new Virage.

At first glance, it looks the same as any of the current Astons.

But take a second look and you'll see that nearly all the body panels are new,

as are the front grille and the streamlined headlights.

But does it fill the gap between the DB9 and the DBS?

Now, the DBS has 510 horsepower,

the DB9 over there has 470, and the Virage, that has 490.

Logically, then, the Virage should be the second fastest.

I wonder how we can find that out.

Well, come on, we've got a runway and three Astons. What do you expect us to do?

Go!

Taking the DB9...

Only just. It's very close.

Oh, yes, yes, yes!

Yes!

The car in the middle of the power range

came in the middle of the race. How about that?

The Virage uses the same 6-litre V12 you'll find in the DB9 and the DBS,

but, again, it's a sort of in-the-middle version.

It's tuned differently from the DBS engine.

Now it gives 85% of maximum torque...

it does 1,500 RPM...

and it will go on to 186 miles an hour!

And when all this gets a bit much, you have ceramic brakes as standard.

So...

Phwoar.

Nice.

As for the handling - surprise, surprise - it's sharper than the DB9

but not as aggressive as a DBS.

So let's move on to the price.

The DBS is £170,000.

The DB9 is £125,000.

The new Virage is £150,000. You see - in the middle.

So far, then, it's shaping up well, and it gets better.

This is probably the best-looking of all the Astons

and it has the nicest interior.

The stitching is all done by one seamstress to keep the weave constant.

And, joy of joys, the useless Volvo sat nav of other Astons

has been ditched for one that works.

However, before I can give this car a clean bill of health,

I have to address the elephant in the room.

The worry is, they've made another track monster.

They've fallen for the same old trick - it's got to go round the Nurburgring, etc, etc.

So I've decided to do something radical...

leave the track and go for a potter round our airfield.

My idea here is to go on something a bit like a real road and see what the ride is actually like,

and it will allow me to show you all the bits of the Top Gear test track that you never normally see.

That's actually our studio. This is Nigel's garage.

He's a lovely chap.

Unfortunately, viewers, I then had to cancel the rest of the tour

because, after just a few hundred yards, I was too cross to carry on.

My God, I don't believe it. They've done it.

I've got everything turned off, I've got sport off, the firm suspension off, but it's still too jiggly.

It's been ruined by the ride. Listen.

Rattle, rattle, bang, bang. That is not necessary.

The Virage, then, is a missed opportunity.

It could, and should, have been a comfortable gentleman's express.

Instead, it's just another pointless bone-shaking racing car.

What? Right!

Is this going to be a five-minute argument, or do you want the full half-hour?

No, cos I actually agree with you. No... Oh, for God's sake!

Look, the point is, Aston already make the DBS and the Vantage S

for enthusiasts of the Nurburgring,

but there might be somebody who wants a faster Aston

but maybe has, I don't know, backache, for example! Yes, I agree with that.

Oh, shut up, man! Do you not realise this could have been that car,

and it isn't, and that's a tragedy? I know.

You are such an idiot! Honestly!

Anyway, we must now find out how fast it goes round our track.

Why?!

Because that enables me to say some ludicrous things about our tame racing driver.

Some say that he can't eat mashed potato for religious reasons...

and that he recently received 47,000 tickets, Olympic tickets,

all of them for the final of the women's wrestling.

All we know is, he's called The Stig!

And he's off.

A nice controlled start there. And listen to that V12.

OK, coming up to the first corner.

It's a heavy car, this, but it manages to corner surprisingly flat.

Stig listening to the Bangles there, but in German.

Very off.

One lot of tyre smoke coming out of Chicago.

Coming up to Hammerhead. Will the big engine upfront drag the nose wide?

No, it is clinging on,

and it is in fact... Yep! It's the back that's letting go first.

Very neat on the way out, though.

OK, into Follow Through. Really opening up the taps now.

You can hear him shift up.

Lifting it, actually, into the approach to the tyres.

That is impressive. Just two corners left now.

Hard on those ceramic brakes. Fat Pirelli squealing.

Just Gambon left.

Sliding it through there and across the line!

He did it... He did it in 1.24.4,

so it's only half a second slower than the DBS. Yeah.

And it would've been a much better car if it had been five seconds slower. I agree.

Ah, you're insufferable!

And now we must do the news, and we start off with news that since James drove that Virage,

Aston Martin have launched a new car, and here it is.

It's called the V12 Zagato. There it is.

James will be particularly interested in this, I think. Will I?

You will. Because the boss of the company was quoted this week

as saying, "The Nurburgring is where we sign off every new model

"and there could be NO better place for the new V12 Zagato to be finally tested,"

said the BOSS of Aston Martin. For crying out loud!

If I'd been in Bomber Command in 1943,

I would have bombed the Nurburgring every night until it was gone!

Am I the only person who thinks like this? This bad back of yours - does it make you a bit crabby?

It's nothing to do with my bad back. He's got a bad back as well, but he won't agree... OK! OK!

Ride is important. All right, all right! Bomb it!

It was a bad policy. Look where we are now. We no longer have Dresden Cathedral

or all that lovely pottery, but we do have the Nurburgring,

and under my bombing policy, we wouldn't have cars that rode badly

and you'd have a nice cathedral to look at, and better saucers!

Now, have you noticed how some of the best-looking cars you can buy these days

are, like, ordinary family saloons or hatchbacks or estates? I know what you mean. Yeah.

Citroen have sent us a picture of their new DS5.

That is a good-looking ordinary, mid-size car.

It's not alone. What's that Kia called, from a while back? The Rooney. Not the Rooney.

Rio. Rio.

That was an awful-looking car, but they've launched this,

which is called the something-or-other. The Optic.

Optical... Optima. Doesn't matter. Nobody who watches Top Gear is going to buy a Kia, but if they did...

All Kia drivers are watching Countryfile going,

"It's Adam's farm in a minute. We're looking forward to that. Oh, look at the little baa-lamb."

Make a trail for what's on the other side! Countryfile's a brilliant show.

Particularly when it's cold, and Julie Bradbury's out in a T-shirt. Leave it! Leave it!

The Peugeot 508 is a good-looking car. It is. We've got a picture.

What makes that particularly good is that Peugeots in recent years have had the big guppy mouths on them.

Yes, that. That is a very good impersonation of a Peugeot.

I can only impersonate a Morgan.

Can you do any other car?

No, I can only do Peugeots, but I can do any Peugeot you name. 308.

207. What's the people-carrier? Can you do that one?

Yeah, hang on, that's...

I'll stump him.

You know the tiny one, the 1007 with electric sliding doors?

Ah... ahh... ahh... It's exactly like that.

And the Vauxhall Insignia. I was following one the other day. That's basically a Vectra.

Yeah, fabulous. And the great thing is, it's got positive camber on its back wheels.

You've got positive camber and you look ridiculous. He's right.

You have, you have. We've followed you round every airport in the world

and you lumber along with your stupid legs bending out at the knee, like that.

And it's like positive camber, and you look TERRIBLE.

It looks good, positive camber. You look like a knackered Spitfire. Yeah. Spitfires are cool.

No, a leaky Triumph Spitfire. That's assuming that's oil that's leaking out of you.

It's cos I'm set up for angling. You're set up for?!

If you could find a 100-metre track that did that,

I could beat Usain Bolt, cos I could run round corners.

You've been set up for cornering?

You can shut up. You look like a car that's had its wheels nicked. Well... Now, last week,

we looked at a modern-day interpretation of the E-Type, which was fantastic.

Well, now there's another one. Here it is.

I just think that looks spectacularly good.

It starts out in life as a Jaguar XK, our modern-day car,

and then a Swiss company ups the V8 engine by 100 horsepower

and then they fit a - I have to say - brilliant-looking carbon fibre and aluminium body,

so it's 200 kilograms lighter. That's gorgeous. I know.

I'm not sure I really like it. That's cos you're odd.

But... but I think there is a problem with this car...

because they've called it the Growler.

Yeah.

Now... now, we... we... we Googled "growler"...

and we were quite surprised and a bit shocked

by what it turns out to mean.

And do you know, Richard, I've forgotten what it is. What does it mean?

Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen?

Well, you know those big welcome mats you might see on a girl in the '70s?