New series of 5th Gear

[Steve_Perry]

I missed it last night but caught the repeat tonight.

Tonight they had Jensen Button in his BAR racing a world superbike and a powerboat. What suprised me was that the F1 car totally trounced the works Honda bike. It was kinda even between the two up to approx 100mph then the F1 car just left the bike for dust. The bike couldn't make full use of all its power as it was in wheelie city. The boat never stood a chance.

They also did a look back at the Ford Capri and Jason Plato critiqued the BMW 1 series. Summary on the Beemer: nice but stupidly expensive.

Anyways, now to the main reason for my post Next week they get to play with a...










Maclaren-Mercedes SLR :bannana: :bannana: :bannana:

S.

 

[DanW]

Hardly a fair comparison though.

You have the absolute pinacle of motorsport technology up against what is effectively a tuned up road bike.......

Still made me laugh though, as the HM Plant guys were loading the bike into a van wondering whats for tea, the F1 team would have been looking forward to a good nights rebuild on a buggered traction control system.

A better comparison would have been any MotoGP bike, although in fairness that would have got trounced too as you just cant get the power down 250bhp, 140kg, 1 thin tyre for traction.

 

[Steve_Perry]

I was genuinely suprised though, I thought the bike would crap all over the car. What seemed unfair to me was the inclusion of a boat that cost £50k against a bike, did they say £1M for the works build Honda Fireblade and a Formula 1 race car, how much do they go for these days? The boat was never in with a chance even with it's flying start against the bike and car's standing start.

S.

 

[peterchurch]

I lost interest in the program when the bird described a crapri as... "an Aston Martin without the pretence!!!" of course she forgot to add "or the speed or the build quality of one either" to the end of the sentence but I was choking on my dinner by then anyway...

Apart from the fact that some of us can probably remember the bloody things the first time round. my best mate had threeon the trot, and all of them rotted off their wheels from the inside out

Don't think James Bond would look quite so cool tuning up to fight evil in his shell suit and capri do you ??

wonders never cease ....

 

[scotth_uk]

Wasn't it just a Honda/Honda/Honda thing for PR? Wasn't paying attention..... :-(

If anyone saw this, you were looking at my place in the background when the boat was doing it's tight turns. They were near my place in the morning before the actual race. I didn't see the car or bike, as I didn't know what was happening.

I live in the highrise in the background (7th floor) and was on my balcony filming the boat myself!!!!

 

[DanW]

F1 car - 1.6bhp/kg

BSB Fireblade - 1.1bhp/kg

MotoGP Bike - 1.7bhp/kg

So it would have been a lot closer with a MotoGP bike, but I still think that an F1 car would murder it purely because of traction.

 

[Bugblatter]

You can tell what I thought of the Ford Capri, by the fact that I always referred to them as the Ford Crapi!

 

[RichieRuss2000]

Never saw the program hopefully Sky + did its job!

Did any of you see that show with Clarkston a few years back when he raced a Yamaha R1 against a Porsche C4, both were standard. I was surprised when the 911 beat it round the track by a few 1/10's of a sec.

They concluded that bikes are usually only better in straight lines where there power/weight ratio shines, other than that the bikes tyres and high centre of gravity always let them down.

 

[peterchurch]

You can tell what I thought of the Ford Capri, by the fact that I always referred to them as the Ford Crapi!

Mind you there is one upside to this comical attempt to bring back this Horror of a car The first full on bout of rain we get and all the sad fashion conscious morons that ran out to buy one will be wiped of the face of the planet Hopefully taking what’s left of the cars with them

 

[GregE240]

Sorry chaps, but I don't get Fifth Gear.

It bills itself as a motoring programme, so what do we get? An utterly pointless 15 minutes drooling over a boat, a bike and an F1 car. Even Tiff looked bored stupid.

Then we got VBH banging on about how good Capris were (since when? They had engines made out of Essex's finest pig iron and the rear suspension off a horse carriage).

And Mr Plato said the 1-Series was nice, handled well but ultimately expensive. No S***, Sherlock!

Dumbed down television for the masses. Give me Top Gear any time.

 

[gary350]

Apart from the fact that some of us can probably remember the bloody things the first time round. my best mate had threeon the trot, and all of them rotted off their wheels from the inside out

I bought one of the first Capriis in 1969 in those days I liked to soundproof the cars so imagine my surprize when I took of the door panel and found that the inside had not been painted it was just red rust the car was then 3 weeks old, it was garbage from the first day sold it not long after the worst car I have ever bought.
Just thought of other things that went wrong, driving out of the garage (melton mowbray ford, and the police stopped me about 100 yards from the garage "did you know your reversing lights are on sir" I had to pull the wires out of the lights, 30 miles firther on ( I was heading for Warminster) my mother who was in the front seat tried to wind down the window it just dropped like a stone we could not get it back to keep out of the wind she tried to move the seat forward the seat back just collapsed flat she had to sit in the back for the next 100 or so miles, what a car, oh and the bonnet came up when crossing the severn bridge a couple a months later, scared the s++t out of me..


gary

 

[watsone91]

FORD found on road dead If i won this capri i would be very sick

 

[RichardM]

Didn't they say it was worth £10K?

 

[Sp!ke]

Unfair competition...

Firstly, Rutter did an appauling launch on the bike and only started making headway when he got into second, secondly the a fireblade just isnt quick. Its only a 750 roadbike FFS, not a F1 car. A more fair race would have been if they used a Barros's moto GP bike.

Even my bike would trounce that fireblade and its not even particulary tuned. Some of the really keen guys are hitting over 200 mph & less than 8 seconds in a standing quarter mile on modified road bikes... again using one wheel as traction. That would have trounced the F1 car at over 9 seconds - but then what kind of a result do you expect to get from a car show

 

[Howard]

Also, just to add my two penneth, coming from a family that works with boats , i know a leeetle bit about them.

Ok, they've got an F1 car, a fast bike, and a crappy outboard powered boat with 225 hp, its not even the same league.... perhaps they could of lined up a class 1 offshore powerboat (effectively F1 on water) , these things are 40feet long, regularly top 150 mph and have two, sometimes three Lamborghini petrols or Seatek diesels each engine being 1000bhp+ these boats have F16 type fighter canopies over the drivers and throttlemen, to stop their heads being torn off in the event of a rollover (princess Carolines husband Stefano Casiraghi had this happen ) . But i almost forgot, Honda don't compete, and this was a big PR stunt for Honda so they roll out what they've got. Steve Curtis (boat driver) should know better , he has a large stake in Cougar Powerboats (who do compete in Class1) and raced competetively for many years........

Excuse the grammar, i forget where the comma and full stop keys are while ranting......

Anyway - it was fun to watch..
H

 

[DanW]

Thanks for that info Howard, good to be clued up about stuff like that. You're absolutely right.

Sp!ke, the blade is actually a 1000cc bike and although essentially based on a road bike, there are few similarities as everything is changed ie. forks, swingarm, engine etc. I would'nt call it slow, 180+bhp at the wheel and 160kg (limited) is pretty impressive stuff. Mind you, if you have a road bike that's quicker, the cudos to you.

BTW the top bikes cost around 100K to build not 1M. Plus most of the runners in BSB are knocking around on machinery less than a fifth the cost.

Still was a stoopid race.

 

[Steve_Perry]

Reminder Guys/Gals... SLR Tonight

...Anyways, now to the main reason for my post Next week they get to play with a...


Maclaren-Mercedes SLR :bannana: :bannana: :bannana:

Just a reminder gang, 'tis on tonight...

Channel 5 - 8:30pm.

S.

 

[pammy]

Thanks for the reminder Steve - I had forgotten

 

[bigbenz260]

Yeah nice one steve, it had totally slipped my mind, now then where did i put those kleenex??

 

[pammy]

I want one

The "factory" that was a story in itself - incredible.

How superb did that engine sound? You could hear the supercharger whistling though which I thought a tad out of place But the performance on the track and the road was incredible - loved seeing the air-brakecome up

BUT - no resale value so residuals will be poor - if every seat is made for the owner - then they aint gonna be very comfy for the next bod - so I'll take one of anyones hands if they need to get shut