The Fifth Gear thread

[Ascender]

I made it to 2:15..... Fvck me.....

I'm willing to forgive a lot because of Phoenix Nights, but honestly...

[mik]

OK, I thought you were both being a bit harsh (as I like Paddy on the Keith & Paddy Picture Show).

Unfortunately I was incorrect.

[Coaster1]

Just finished ep6 (GTR, GT3 RS, Insignia, Polo GTi etc), I’ve never seen Jason Plato so smitten about a car, from the PASSENGER SEAT!

And the noise!

If you don’t have time, just watched the final 8-9 minutes of the episode. (Be quick before it disappears from Quest catch up)

[IanF]

Just finished ep6 (GTR, GT3 RS, Insignia, Polo GTi etc), I’ve never seen Jason Plato so smitten about a car, from the PASSENGER SEAT!

And the noise!

If you don’t have time, just watched the final 8-9 minutes of the episode. (Be quick before it disappears from Quest catch up)

Thanks for the recommendation Coaster; I really enjoyed that. Why are Quest removing the episodes so quickly? Surely they can get more ad revenue by keeping them up?

[Coaster1]

Yes, silly by Quest, not sure why

Very good series, some daft bits like the Team Test, 4x4 SUVs on track and ‘poor man’s wheelers dealers’, but overall very enjoyable.

The Team Test on ep6, the Insignia, was really good though, but then Tiff Needell can make any car look entertaining.

[Mito Man]

Thread revival from the long dead but it’s not worth making a new one for it.

So this is still kicking I think, there was a pretty new episode on D Max last night which I recorded and got round to seeing/fast forwarding through.
Firstly looks like Tiff has been binned in favour of 2 younguns who must have surely just been a racial and gender box ticking exercise - the less said of them the better.
Vicky and Jason Potato remain.

So the car test done by Plato was weird - Porsche Macan GTS vs Model Y dual motor - apparently this was because they both have 400 bhp so it’s an even match (just swiftly ignoring the massive price difference, a Model Y performance is cheaper than a Macan GTS)
No surprises. Macan almost 3 seconds faster than the Model Y
So on the one hand 5th gear desperately engineering a win for the ICE.

Then the other test which I thought would be more interesting was driving a Kia EV9 1000 miles from South Norway to the North. They had a timer with a 24 hour countdown to see if they could drive 1000 miles and charge within that time. Hilariously despite having 2 drivers they split the journey into 3 days, each one involving a full charge at the hotel which wasn’t included in the final time and eventually made the journey (just driving and excluding 3 full charges at the hotel overnight) in 23 hours 59 minutes

What was interesting about it despite the obvious engineering to make it sub 24 hours (so are Fifth Gear pro EV or not…) was that Norway, the most prepared country in the world for EVs still was a pretty shit experience. In the more populated South which has the population density of deepest Wales they still had to queue to charge each time, and in the north the chargers were so far apart that they had to stop with a half battery each time.
The whole trip seemed shit with just non stop range calculations and searching for chargers. They did a thorough job of putting me off making a long distance journey with an EV.