Leno's Top Gear-like segment

[digitalErich]

Jay Leno will implement a Top Gear-like race event in his new prime time show. (http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/08/jay_lenos_secret_weapon_a_race.html) We know that Jay and the Top Gear people get along well enough(seemingly), so I'm not ready to call this a "rip off" just yet, but I am curious how well this will go over in the States. Motor sport is less popular here, in general, but there's a lot of NASCAR fans out there so I really have no idea how this play out.

The Celebrity Lap has always been the more boring part of Top Gear for me and granted might be because I don't know a good 40% of the people behind the wheel, but we'll see. In any case, this will at least get me to watch an episode or two of Leno's new show. Before I read this, I was going to skip it completely.

[digitalErich]

Also...what ever happened to Top Gear America? I heard it about it for weeks and even saw commercials for it and now it's gone completely dark.

[J Arcane]

Clarkson, et. al. have made some commentary in interviews that suggested it just wouldn't work in America, though they weren't personally apprised of all the details.

My guess is they couldn't get it made in the American TV system. Shit's more commercialized over here, public TV is weaker than it is in Britain and Australia, so that means dealing with either not enough funding to do it justice, or TV producer types who wanted to fuck it all up.

Speaking personally, I'd seriously like to do a mock Top Gear GT show once GT5 comes out, using the in game engine to run tests and doing reviews of the cars in the game. Hell, as realistic as the series is getting such things might even be roughly comparable to a real world test. Which means it might even be useful. But if nothing else, it'd be a great tool for finding out which cars are worth blowing credits on.

[digitalErich]

I heard they did a pilot for TG: America and spent like a million dollars on it and got a lot of the off-camera BBC Top Gear staff for it...that tells me more than a few people thought it would work.

Personally, I've always thought it wouldn't work because they would inevitably try to court the auto industry for adds while at the same time mostly slamming (rightfully so) the US auto industry. So you alienate some add revenue and audience at the same time.

[digitalErich]

Speaking personally, I'd seriously like to do a mock Top Gear GT show once GT5 comes out, using the in game engine to run tests and doing reviews of the cars in the game.
That's a pretty cool idea, acutally. You should follow through with it.

[CES]

I have to imagine he's got at least unofficial approval from the TG staff for this. Leno is a huge Top Gear fan and Top Gear are huge fans of Jay Lenos Garage.

Besides, if he follows the convention, he'll use something like a manual European saloon which should screw celebrities over so badly and that can't be a bad thing.

[digitalErich]

I have to imagine he's got at least unofficial approval from the TG staff for this. Leno is a huge Top Gear fan and Top Gear are huge fans of Jay Lenos Garage.
My thoughts exactly, which I why I wanted to stop any "rip-off!" posts from clogging this thread. I'm sure this was at least casually vetted with the TG hosts.

[Generation ABXY]

I used to enjoy the Jay's Garage segments from his show and I've liked what little I've seen of Top Gear, so this could be interesting. Of course, I'm very much a Leno fan (I can't stand Letterman or Conan), so take that as you will.