Top Gear Patagonia Special

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I know they're going over old ground but it's still good fun viewing.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May take three V8-engined sports cars on a gruelling 1600-mile journey through the spectacular landscapes of Patagonia. Along the way they encounter rough roads, collapsed bridges, broken bones and a cow as they press onwards against the odds in a quest to reach the southernmost city in the world.

Part 1 tonight at 8::30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ww8hj
 
Just another 20 mins of Grand Canyon to go!
 
James May opens up about Top Gear numberplate Argentina controversy.

 
Looks like they have saved all the excitement for part 2. The scenery looked great for photographs but the show was a bit dull. I liked the slope reference though.
 
Laudrup said:
Looks like they have saved all the excitement for part 2. The scenery looked great for photographs but the show was a bit dull. I liked the slope reference though.
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I felt the same. They usually have better camera work, particularly in such a stunning location.
 
The person driving the 2CV must have been crapping themselves. What a bunch of animals throwing rocks at people.
 
Fair play to them .... a few peso from the british taxpayer to pretend to be outraged. What a load of crock!
 
Interesting that it's not just the Falklands the argentines lay claim to. They also claim islands in the beagle channel are theirs, and dispute the border position.
 
Raptor Mike said:
All for the sake of a number plate, ffs.
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Nope all for the sake of political capital. The whole trip had been organised with local officials who saw the opportunity to follow the lead shown by the countries political leaders. Easier to stir up anti British feeling, and what's more British than the bbc, as it distracts from their economic problems.
 
The whole trip had been organised with local officials who saw the opportunity to follow the lead shown by the countries political leaders
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Certainly didn't do them any good though. The only way the Argentinians will every get their sticky paws on the Falklands is by proving to the Islanders they are ultra nice reasonable people, and to do so for a very long time.
By showing they bare a grudge for something entirely their own fault that happened 30 years + ago they did their own cause no good whatsoever. It'd be like the Germans stoning Brits because we sunk the Bismark!
 
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I was disappointed by this special. It was just a little bit too contrived with all the false stories, one liners and acting.

The landscapes were stunning - what an amazing drive!

Not to excuse the actions of the rioters but I thought the number plate was in extremely poor taste. And exactly the kind of thing topgear does to get extra publicity.
 
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bertpalmer said:
Not to excuse the actions of the rioters but I thought the number plate was in extremely poor taste. And exactly the kind of thing topgear does to get extra publicity.
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so you think they deliberately went and got that particular number plate then ?
 
If they had set out to offend then all the plates would have had double meanings. They would have had the cars covered in pictures of the Belgrano sinking and Thatcher. TG don't do subtle!
 
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donut said:
so you think they deliberately went and got that particular number plate then ?
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Well, who knows. TG is a massive production. My wife works on another BBC programme and they spend a lot of effort researching everything down to the tiniest detail. I find it hard to believe it was a complete coincidence. Based on this, and also Clarkson's reputation for saying/doing things in poor taste to get headlines and boost ratings.
 
So you don't like Clarkson?

A little research on that number plate on the DVLA website brings up the details of the car. Or stick it in an online insurance quote website and it's the same.
My thought when I saw the plate was the owner was a dyslexic 928 owner
 
Top do do a lot of stunts and digs, but I don't think this was one of them. I think if those rioters were doing this because a number plate has a few letters on it that come form the work Falklands and a few numbers that are from that year then that's just petty. I think it was just unlucky of the top gear team to have that plate on. I enjoy top gear even though some of it is obviously staged, but i really enjoy it when they do these road trips and we get to see some amazing parts of the world mixed with quite a lot of facts and a bit of a laugh. Its a shame this one was ruined and I really hope it hasn't put the BBC off letting them do one next year.
 
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neil_g said:
its not hard to transfer a plate to a vehicle :)
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Aparently an FOI request to the DVLA confirmed that the porsche had that plate from the beginning of its life.

If i can find the article i will link to it, bear with me!
 
Say for example the car didn't have that plate, and the Argies didn't cause a fuss..

That would have been one boring Xmas special! It was pushing it as it was, but it's only the end that brought any life to the program. They must have had something planned something to happen other than yet another game of car football.

I do love top gear, but they seem to be struggling for new ideas.

And I do beleive the plate was semi intentional. At one point early on when they were discussing the trip and clarkson was talking about diplomacy or something, the camera shot changed from his face to a wide shot including the 3 presenters at the side and that plate in question firmly in the centre of the shot. To me this was a typical top gear style subtle camera shot to play up to the fact something was going to happen. It's possible this was done in the edit after, but there are to many coincidences for it not to be set up. Maybe they didn't intend quite the outcome they got, but I'm pretty sure they had an idea someone would get p***ed off.
 
and all the locals threw the rocks from a grassy knoll :)
 
So they had more than 2 hours of footage, several hours of footage and unfortunately I think the programming suffered as it was all set out to defend the BBC. The whole point of the editing was changed to highlight the last ten minutes. So it was edited as - here we are making the same cars across a continemt journey, pretty landscapes, difficult terrain to cross with unsuitable cars, then look what happened...
 
Was it intentional?
Come off it!
The number was H982FKL

H?
No relevance to the Falklands war
982? If you push it maybe has a relevance, but you're stretching imagination.
FKL? If you abbreviate Falklands it would be FLK, not FKL.
So why would anyone sensible associate that with the war? They wouldn't, I doubt anyone would have thought about that.
I can probably find some obscure half relevance from most number plates to the Falklands war, but like the BBC, I really do have better things to do.
It's simply sour grapes from some Argentinians who can't accept that they invaded someone else's property, and got a kicking for it.
There's a moral to the story, hands off! And it's a shame you didn't learn from the Germans who moved to Argentina after WW2 and get over it.
 
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I personally think anyone who thinks that Clarkson, May & Hammond are smart enough to do this need certifying....


My main question is why were the 3 lead vehicles not put into a unmarked covered truck / s for the exodus ???? - & I would have also burnt the vehicles rather than just ditch them.

The sad reality is it just shows how little these people have learnt since 1982.
 
I like TG and the presenters, but to be frank having watched both episodes back-to-back last night it was boring and definitely not 'special'. The last 10 minutes were hardly worth the wait.
 
Diving Pete said:
My main question is why were the 3 lead vehicles not put into a unmarked covered truck / s for the exodus ???? - & I would have also burnt the vehicles rather than just ditch them.
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They got given a short time to get out of Dodge, plus where were they going to hire the necessary vehicles? Think any locals were going to help?
 
I quite like TG in short doses.
This was entirely contrived from start to finish IMO.
 
Bernie174 said:
Was it intentional?
Come off it!
The number was H982FKL

H?
No relevance to the Falklands war
982? If you push it maybe has a relevance, but you're stretching imagination.
FKL? If you abbreviate Falklands it would be FLK, not FKL.
So why would anyone sensible associate that with the war? They wouldn't, I doubt anyone would have thought about that.
I can probably find some obscure half relevance from most number plates to the Falklands war, but like the BBC, I really do have better things to do.
It's simply sour grapes from some Argentinians who can't accept that they invaded someone else's property, and got a kicking for it.
There's a moral to the story, hands off! And it's a shame you didn't learn from the Germans who moved to Argentina after WW2 and get over it.
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I struggled also to see the relevance of the plate to the war. However, when it comes to Britain, any excuse and they will sound off. To commemorate their foolishness, we should send Vulcan over for a memorial flight.
 
I think the interview with James May at the top of the thread pretty much sums up the fact that it wasn't a deliberate Falklands reference.

It was the Twitter guy that stirred it all up and probably spun it as deliberate.
 
ST4 said:
I struggled also to see the relevance of the plate to the war. However, when it comes to Britain, any excuse and they will sound off. To commemorate their foolishness, we should send Vulcan over for a memorial flight.
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There's a whole book devoted to the logistics of getting a Vulcan to bomb the Port Stanley runway:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vulcan-607-Rowland-White/dp/0552152293

Whether the number plate was intentional (strange it was never mentioned by any of the three of them during the programme) or not, it hardly warranted such a violent response from the Argentinians. I truly believe that if they were an Argentinian film crew and the situation was reversed, they would not have met with anything like that in the UK.

PS: The comment on the front of the book in the link above (excellent btw) I've just noticed is from ... Jeremy Clarkson.
 
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Cartus said:
I truly believe that if they were an Argentinian film crew and the situation was reversed, they would not have met with anything like that in the UK.
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Yes because us British are such a lovely non-violent bunch aren't we.
 
The plate was clearly reference to the car model, although not a perfect one. Number plates usually aren't perfect. However if you are an argentinian a******e that wants to start mob, anything is easy to see.
 
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