Alex Unleashed on Cars

  I discussed with some friends a while ago what the best series of Top Gear was and following that I did some thinking and rewatched every series to come to a conclusion. And my conclusion was that series 5 was my favourite. And what I think set this series apart from almost all the other series was the structure of the series. What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at how the episodes are ordered and which films feature, the series starts off somewhat humble, we have the new Porsche 911, another Hammond stunt (how many bouncy castles can an ice cream van jump?) and the Vauxhall Monaro, Chrysler 300C & Jaguar S-Type R on Pennine Sands alongside the usual news and Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. Then as we go along, we get the Ferrari Enzo, Jeremy’s Nürburgring challenge, the £1500 Porsches and then the final 3 episodes are where we get the best bits yet. The Top Gear Awards, Ferrari 612 vs Plane, Renault F1 car and the Ariel Atom destroying Jeremy’s face. There are als...

  I think it’s fair to say that cars are all becoming a bit samey, I mean, have you seen the Renault range? All of them except the Clio and 5EV look the same. But can you blame them? When manufactures' dare to be different, they often flop in sales but eventually can become the apple of enthusiast’s eyes. Just look at the Mazda RX-7. First things first, it is most certainly a good-looking car, most Japanese cars at the time were very square, boxy designs, and yet here’s a very swooping curvy , European design, it’s very probably the best-looking Japanese car to date. So, it looks different but is also very unique under the skin. The engine is a classic Mazda rotary engine, it’s only a 1.3 but it has 2 turbo’s that make 236 BHP (in UK spec) and can propel the featherweight coupe to 60 in little over 5 seconds. It’s very fast and when you get to a corner, you find grip and very strong brakes, it stops from 70 in just 44.8 metres, a BMW M3 EVO takes 48.3 metres. For a car that cos...