Top Gear

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you so much. Hello!

Hello and welcome. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

Now, even though this programme has taken a terrible battering

in the newspapers in recent weeks,

we have made every effort we possibly can

to make sure this series is unaffected.

SCATTERED APPLAUSE Thank you. Thank you, really.

Thanks very much.

So, coming up now is a montage of what you can expect

over the next seven weeks.

57 miles to the gallon!

So, spacious... and economical.

Going through the first corner...

And THAT is how a camshaft works.

Mate!

No-o-o! There's been a bit of a mistake.

THAT is the tape we sent to the newspapers

in the hope they'd be fooled into thinking

that's what we'll be doing. What we're actually doing is THIS!

Oh, no! That's not what I wanted to see in the mirror! Heading to the side...

ENGINE ROARS

There he is! There he is!

Turning left into Acacia Avenue.

Over there. Over there. Go over there!

Buffeting! Buffeting!

He's The Stig's Chinese cousin.

Hold onto your spine.

GROANING Johnson makes a good start.

Come on, you little bugger!

Man alive! Are we getting some shots here?!

Thank you. Just browsing.

Stretch it, stretch it, stretch it! Come on!

HE CHUCKLES Ow!

How's that possible?

Oh... That was beautiful.

All of that is to come, but we kick off tonight with this.

Yes, because this is important.

Let's say you want a mid-engine supercar but, for some reason,

you don't want a Ferrari 458.

What is best for you?

Now, naturally, of course, us three could not agree on a solution on this,

so the producer said we had to settle our

differences with a road trip across Italy.

'The meeting point was the beautiful town of Lecce, in the heel of Italy,

'and I was the first to arrive.'

This is the McLaren MP4-12C.

It's a car made with an almost psychotic attention to detail.

It's very technical. It's why, I think, it probably suits me quite well.

ENGINE ROARS Then Jeremy arrived in a car that suits HIM quite well.

Morning, shrinking violet. JEREMY LAUGHS

This...

HE COUGHS AND SPLUTTERS

is a Lamborghini Aventador.

What I love most of all about this is that

Audi did all the boring engine and wiring bits

and then let Lamborghini go mad with the styling.

It looks better than yours and, therefore, it IS better.

I agree. As a poster, as Lamborghinis always have been, it is superb.

It looks great.

But it's a bit of a dinosaur, to be honest. It is. It is.

It's too big, it's too wide. I'm sorry?! This, you just know...

All they ever talked about was G. They were sitting going,

"How can we make it go round a corner a little bit faster?"

It's a supercar. "So give it guns! Let's give it guns! Space rockets!"

This... they will have had seven years of

meetings to get to that windscreen wiper.

So it works properly. What's wrong with that?

Lamborghini would've said, "Why don't we use a laser?

"Why don't we have lasers shooting heat onto the windscreen to...?"

That's why I love Lambos. They're mental.

Have you had a lot of pop today?

'At that moment, Hammond arrived, in a Noble M600.' Oh, yeah.

So, Hammond... Morning. Let's just get this straight.

You think there are people in the world who are going to say,

"No, I don't want something Italian and exotic. Don't want a Ferrari.

"I want something built on a light industrial

unit in Leicestershire"? No, because...

No, wait a minute. Sorry. You buy this, I think,

because it's got the engine from a Volvo XC90.

No! Yes, the engine may be from a Volvo, but it's made by Yamaha.

It's twin-engine, it's absolutely magnificent,

and this car, above everything else, is light.

Comparing these... it's like comparing me with you.

The power-to-weight ratio is insane. 541 brake horsepower per tonne in there.

That's Bugatti Veyron territory, and you know it!

This is going to crush you guys like beetles under its feet.

Soon, our cars started to draw a bit of a crowd...

so the producer said we should leave the town

and go for a little drive in the country.

Bloody hellfire!

HE CHUCKLES

Quite good.

You are probably sitting there, thinking, "Hold on!

Why would I spend £228,000

"on a car with no airbags or anti-lock brakes, made in Leicester?"

But that's missing the point.

If I were to ask those two what the best supercar ever made is,

I know what they'd answer.

Ferrari F40.

There's something of the Ferrari F40 about this.

Something to do with the way it rides on the road, the way it feels.

The simplicity of it.

I buy the argument for a flamboyant supercar. I get it.

But maybe there is another way of doing it.

There's a sort of joy in things that simply

work really well, like this gearbox.

It's sort of like a two-stage trigger on a sniping rifle...

you can preload it with half a ball... and then change.

It's very satisfying.

Maybe really anal attention to detail will have a charm of its own. Let's see.

James and Richard can make as many arguments

as they want, but the fact is this.

They're driving about in Virgin Cola.

It's not the real thing. This is the real thing.

Lamborghini invented the supercar with the Miura,

the world's first mid-engine speed and dream machine.

I mean, yes, this is the most expensive car here.

A quarter of a million pounds. But who cares? It's a dream car.

You don't dream about going to Filey or Bridlington.

You dream about going to Tahiti.

Actually, Tahiti's terrible. I went there once.

It was full of Americans looking at dolphins.

'Half an hour later, we were told to brim the tanks in our cars

'and pay careful attention to the challenge we were about to receive.'

Hang on a minute. "You will now see which of

your cars can achieve the highest speed."

That'll be mine. It's as simple as that.

It's the fastest.

"How fast your car can go is not relevant." It sort of is.

"It's how fast you dare drive it."

'The location for this challenge was the Nardo test track,

'a banked 8-mile circle of tarmac so vast it can be seen clearly from space.

'No car can achieve its true top speed here because it's one endless corner.

'But it is one of only two or three places

in the world where they can get close.

'Lamborghini and McLaren had both sent technicians to make sure their cars,

'and especially the tyres, could handle the

vast heat of constant high-speed cornering.

'But as for Richard and his car from Leicester... '

Do Noble not have a workshop here? Not a workshop, no.

I suppose if we were doing this at Mallory Park, they'd send Geoff over(!)

I've done it. It's all right. All four tyres are the same makes.

That there's air in 'em.

'James and I were feeling fairly confident...

'until we started chatting to a man called Max Venturi,

'who is one of Lambo's test drivers.'

We do a lot of testing here but we don't do too much the top speed,

because it is very bumpy.

You... you could jump from one lane to the other lane,

so is... That sounds bad.

And also, today, it is windy,

so you need to take care about the wind, as well.

What, do we need to tack(?)

'Because speedometers are never absolutely accurate,

'the producers fitted each of our cars with hi-tech telemetry

'so they could see how fast we were really going.

'And then we were sent on to the track for a sighting lap.'

I have the most to lose here.

My car is the fastest... top speed 225mph.

Jeremy's Lambo... 217, James's McLaren 205mph,

or to put it another way, a walking race.

Now, I have 691 brake horsepower at my disposal.

That's almost 100 more than James has.

And it's proper horsepower.

Blue-blooded, real horsepower.

Thanks to emission regulations,

this is probably the last V12 engine that will ever be made.

From now on, they'll have to be smaller and turbo charged,

like they are in the Noble and the McLaren.

Yes, my engine is the smallest. It's a 3.8-litre V8,

but it has the highest specific output, that is, of all the engines here,

it produces the most BHP per litre,

because it's been intelligently designed by engineers in Woking,

not just put together to impress yahoos.

Those two keep banging on about, "This has got the engine out of a Volvo XC90."

Yes, well, OK, but let's not forget, Yamaha make it,

and they produce some pretty amazing motorcycle engines,

and Noble have then strapped two turbos to it, so it makes 650 brake horsepower.

I say that, but I can change that.

With this button down here, I can have 450 for road, 550 for track,

or 650 for race. I'm going to have the full 650, I think, today.

I do have quite a lot of respect for the Midget doing this, because...

Well, the last time he tried to go fast on a test track, it didn't go well.

With the sighting lap over,

we were told to put some distance between ourselves and go for it.

I'm moving up into the outside lane.

It's 250kph.

Now we're in 6th speed...

Moving up a little bit...

It does feel a bit wobbly. I don't like it.

270...

My God, this surface is shocking!

There's the wind! There's the wobble!

There's the jump!

Ooh, God!

See, that is 280, and it's really starting to weave now. 290...

'Max from Lamborghini had warned all of us

'that it would be too dangerous to exceed 300km per hour.

'And all of us chose to ignore him.'