Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/13/the-david-starsky-gran-torino.html
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Shenanigans! At no point did the cars hit a dirt ramp and go flying over a shallow creek.
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I would have liked to see Magnum PI’s Ferrari in there too and maybe Night Rider.
Today, a Toyota Camry would be beat all of these cars using far less fuel. We’ve come a long way.
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Ahhh, I do love Fifth Gear. Not really more straightlaced than Top Gear, but certainly less bonkers and cheeky.
Better drivers on the whole.
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Might as well add the Adam West Batmobile and the A-Team van while you’re at it.
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Almost as boring as the original shows.
Almost.
The police hound laff-riot was typical of TV for the times.
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We called them “boats”. The ones with big motors and fat rear tires were good for going fast in a straight line.
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Pssshhh… I could have told you the Charger would win a race against a Gran Torino and I didn’t have to make a video about it.
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That race would have killed ten ordinary men.
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My favorite thing about the General Lee was its magical ability to repair itself immediately following a rough landing that clearly crumpled the front fender and trashed the suspension.
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Just remember. The closing credits theme was better than the opening music.
Of … course they did. Now don’t go ‘stealing’ my ‘fair use’. 
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The '69 Dodge Charger RT…I used to get picked up from school in that.
It was pretty much the joy ride from Blue Velvet every time.
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That’s not a huge surprise, considering that out of the seven Fifth Gear hosts that lasted more than a season, three have been professional racing drivers, and another racing as a hobby in Amateur classes. Vicki(from the video above) is from a racing family, and when she got into Automotive journalism, it was a sideline to her main job as a racing instructor at Silverstone.
Jason Plato was a British Touring Car Championship and V8 Supercar driver.
Johnny Smith collects classics and customs, and sometimes takes them out for Classics rallies or a bit of Autocrossing.
And of course Tiff, famously, was an incredibly talented driver, making it from his first have-a-go drive(sort of like those “Experiences” you can buy nowdays) at Brand’s Hatch to being a fully fledged F1 championship driver in under a decade, which was almost unheard of even at the time.
(Of the single season hosts, it’s a similar story - of the three, not including the appropriately named producer Jon Bently’s very short stint, you’ve got two Automotive journalists, and Ben Collins, who did a season-long stint on Fifth Gear after he was revealed as The Stig and subsequently fired.)
Also, fun facts, Tiff and Vicki also used to host Top Gear.
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Here’s my understanding of 2018 youtube:
You can’t tell us the Charger would win, and you can’t make a video showing us the Charger would win, you have to make a video showing you telling us the Charger would win.
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Tiff is amazing.
I have never seen a feat such as taping the knife to the hood of a BMW M5, and then taking slices off a cucumber while doing a 4 wheel drift around a bend.
Even Clarkson speaks of him reverently.
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I have never seen a feat such as taping the knife to the hood of a BMW M5, and then taking slices off a cucumber while doing a 4 wheel drift around a bend.
And even while doing that sort of thing, he’s still a consummate professional presenter - do you remember the time he was bombing around a pretty technical track at 120-150 mile an hour, with Jason Plato in the passenger seat, (mostly) calmly holding a conversation about the merits of the car and filling the dead air left by Jason being speechless? And it takes a hell of a driver to scare someone who can handle a V8 supercar. Or smoothly lecturing about how to do a perfect drift(well, back then everyone called them powerslides) while keeping a continuous four-wheel drift in a BMW Z3.
Tiff is genuinely a straight-up genius behind the wheel.
I don’t know if he still does the thing(well, I think he does, but I can’t be bothered to look it up right now), and sadly it’s an experience I missed while living in the UK, but for quite a while, you could pay about 200 pound, and you’d get to do a couple of hot laps with Tiff around Thruxton circuit - he’d bomb around it at top fucking speed, and just chatter away the whole time. Luckily, some folk have put their experience DVD videos up on youtube - though do pardon the peaky audio, not much I can do about it sadly.
(I didn’t intentionally grab only videos with women, I swear, it’s just the ones that came up on recommended next after I hit the first one)
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Oh wow thanks… watching the credits…TIL the great Lalo Schifrin did the theme at least for the first season.
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My bone stock 2017 Kia Forte, with its 2.0L wind-up motor, would wipe the track with either of those cars.
Maybe It was built by the same guys who built Christine.
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