FLOP GEAR: LEADEN AMERICAN "TOP GEAR" PREMIERS

Special Report by the "HDTV Stig"

After a half decade of failure and months of hype, the Americanized version of "Top Gear" finally premiered last night on the History Channel.

On a cramped set with a studio audience of advertiser-coveted 24-35 year-olds (apparently automatons borrowed from a nearby infomercial) Adam Ferrara, Tanner Foust and Rutledge Wood slouched into a pale "Yank" imitation of the legendary BBC motoring program.

Great television it wasn’t.

If Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are motordom’s version of The Beatles, then Ferrara, Foust, and Wood are the garage band down the block covering The Monkeys. They were as flat and fake as Coy and Vance Duke – the scab replacements for Bo and Luke on the "Dukes of Hazzard." They had the panache of Charles Rocket and the forgotten cast of Saturday Night Live’s disastrous 1980-81 season (the first season after the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" left en masse). They were as exciting and unpredictable as a "Car of Tomorrow" NASCAR race on a cookie cutter 1.5 mile oval.

It appears that "Top Gear" America fits in well with our history of bland, homogenized remakes and absolute fakery. The Ferrara, Foust and Wood interpretation of "Top Gear" had all the genuineness of Kevin Cosner playing Robin Hood. It seemed as "real" as the ersatz New York skyline on the strip in Las Vegas. It exuded the same hollow fakery as a strand of cubic zirconia adorning a empty-headed, siliconed bleach blond. It was as tacky and useless as the chintzy gold-tone badges on your nerdy neighbor’s Toyota Camry. It was as blandly pretentious as those old 1970s Ford Grenada commercials comparing the reboxed Falcon to a Mercedes Benz.

Jay Leno did himself a favor by skipping this abortion.

It wasn’t as if the BBC’s American cousins didn’t try. They used many of the "Top Gear" tropes and trademarks. The intro was a version of the Allman Brothers’ "Jessica." They drifted around and did lots of gratuitous smokey doughnuts in exotic cars (a Viper and a trio of Lamborghinis). They had occasions of over-exposed landscape photography and "art" screen shots. They had a ridiculous challenge that obviously disfavored the automobile (evading an attack helicopter around a generic Southern town). They even made use of airport test strips for the speed driving and the "Big Star in a Small Car" segment (Why they didn’t borrow the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" title is a mystery probably rooted in not offending some hypersensitive advertiser). Even the wedding-day-white-clad Stig appeared incognito to wring out the exotics on power laps.

But the whole result came off as flat and tasteless as a day-old truckstop pancake. Ferrara, Foust and Wood had all the chemistry together of three blokes picked at random out of an unemployment queue five minutes before filming started.

Foust at times seemed to be shooting just another episode of "Supercars Exposed," although not quite as annoyingly obnoxious. About the only real difference was he swapped his advertising-clad fire suit for some scruffy "Abercombie and Fitch" rags. Foust seems like the import-tuner’s version of NASCAR’s five-time champion cypher Jimmy Johnson: technically proficient but just not very interesting.

Ferrara was underused and generally upstaged. Although one or two flashes of New York swagger accidentally seeped through, he bumbled through the episode without establishing much of any persona. Ferrara’s interview of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin prior to his lap in a hideous Suzuki CUV seemed detached and listless at times – as if both men were just following a scriptto get the segment over with as soon as possible.

Wood’s annoyingly over-the-top "NASCAR on Speed" persona was dialed back to the point of making him mostly irrelevant and interminably bland. In the Viper segment, Wood was supposed to "navigate" Foust through the generic Southern town (apparently Rutledge’s home town). But he did nothing remotely entertaining or useful. He seemed to be in "prevent defense" mode – just trying not to screw up.

Ferrara, Foust and Wood do not have the gravitas to even be guests on the "real" "Top Gear," much less the collective ability to carry an Americanized version of it. They apparently do not have the inherent literary skills necessary to turn any memorable phrases. They provided us with only the most obvious of insights. They lack sufficient chemistry between themselves to make us care about what happens to their group. Unlike the "real" "Top Gear," I repeatedly checked the time to see when the show was going to be over.

Sarcasm, irony and playing against type were wholly absent.

"Top Gear" America came with such high hopes. Yet all they’ve accomplished so far is to "throw a lot of revs," dump the clutch, and stall the engine at the starting line. The
"Top Gear" franchise deserves so much more.