Top Gear

I see Top Gear are in trouble again. This time a car manufacturer, Tesla, are pissed off with how their car got treated on the show. Feeling it was made to look deliberately bad.

First up, I like Top Gear, it's good fun, Sunday night entertainment. But that's exactly what it is entertainment. It may get nominated in best factual program categories every year, but its basis in fact is a tricky one. The cars they test are generally done for comedic value, or to demonstrate models that let's face it, watching them on the program is the closest many people will actually ever get to one.

Top Gear is entertaining, and that's the main issue, I don't know all that many people who use it to help judge their next purchase, infact I can't think of one. People watch the program to see fast cars driven well and the presenters take on stupid challenges and take the piss out of anything and anyone they can, particularly themselves and each other.

One of Teslas main issues is that their electric car was depicted to only have a range of about 55 miles, They say this is as it was driven 'aggressivley'. Aggressively? On Top Gear? In a race? Round the test track? You say? The bastards. If they'd driven it like grandmas and got 250+ miles out of it, 1) nobody would have watched it and b) they would have complained they're misrepresenting the car as slow, when it was capable of keeping up with the Lotus it was racing against.

I'm not saying the presenters are warm to electric cars such as the tesla, they are generally old school petrol head types, but looking at it, the tesla was driven like any other car they are given, and they found a weakness. Not a weakness the everyday person would find, but one right up their street! I'd imagine they look the piss quite badly out of it, but that's top gear.

Personally I'd forgotten about the episode, no doubt I would have seen it on Dave at some point, but thank you tesla for bringing it into sharp focus once again!

I've noticed many electric car enthusiasts can be quite defensive and critical of any negative press or criticism their vehicles get. But sorry, that's life. People are not to like what you do, some people will cling on to what they know and struggle to accept you. Taking each one of these people with enough public profile to court wont but you respect, make a car they can't argue with, that impresses them... then you'll start winning them over.

Now I'm awaiting the next series,maybe Clarkson and May will have to make a flying car out of a mid 90s corsa with only £675 to spend in total, then drive it off a something to prove it flys. That'd be funny to watch, but tragic too.

Also please mind my spelling, the spell check on here appears to be buggered!