Stuporcars

Lately I've been watching Top Gear on BBC America. The one-word review? Fun.

I know squat about supercars, and I really don't want to know. I can hardly tell everyday cars apart as it is, let alone half-million-dollar Italian supercars that I'll never see in my lifetime, let alone actually drive. So that part of the show is lost on me - the breathtaking news that Jeremy Clarkson doesn't like the Porsche 911 is about as meaningful to me as the news that Captain Kirk doesn't like left-threaded sideways manipulators in the deuterium injection matrix (all the more true considering that a Porsche 911 is a better car than any car I've ever driven).

But other parts of the show are fun. I like the "celebrity laps" where various musicians and assorted glitterati thrash a little blue economy car around the track, sometimes so vigorously that the car sheds wheels entirely. That's fun. Jeremy Clarkson's advice, apparently well-taken for all I know, is "Never lift."

I enjoy their senses of humor. Clarkson can be a bit biting at times, but that's okay. He doesn't seem to care for Americans very much, but that's okay too; there are a lot of Americans I don't care for very much either. I remember the time he had been tasked with building an amphibious automobile, so he mounted an enormous outboard motor on the tailgate of a Toyota pickup truck. He later said something like "The outboard alone weighs almost 600 pounds! That's almost as much as the average American!" I would have laughed out loud if I hadn't been shoveling Cheetos and Fiddle-Faddle into my mouth.

But the best part is the way the three hosts ("presenters", I guess they're called in the land where people drive on the wrong side - yes, I said the wrong side - of the road) hector one another. In a recent episode, Richard Hammond and James May were racing Jeremy Clarkson from London to a ski resort in Switzerland. Richard and James did it the proletarian way, using buses, trains and an airplane. Jeremy went the regal way, in some high-endish Ferrari gran tourismo machine. Beats me what it was. A Ferrari Rigatoni, I don't know. The point is that Jeremy got pulled over by the French police, and James May did the honors for the camera. "Jeremy is here," he said, pointing at a spot on a French road map, "talking to a gendarme. In a few hours' time, he'll be here." He then pointed at Paris. "In a place called la Bastille." Once again, I would have laughed out loud if I hadn't been cleaning my guns with pork fat. (The outcome, if you're interested: Richard and James got to the town first, but Jeremy got to the hotel first.)

But the best part of the show is the observation that driving should be fun, no matter what you drive, or where. All three of them would likely have unflattering things to say about my car, a dusty green Hyundai Elantra, and one imagines that Jeremy Clarkson's comments might actually be interpreted as rude by those with delicate constitutions. But I always enjoy driving my dusty green car more after I've watched Top Gear, even if I can't tell a Porsche Blitzkrieg from a Ferrari Minestrone.

A couple of thoughts on the UK. Once I flew to London on business, and when the driver picked me up at Heathrow, he inquired with earnest concern whether I'd been shot at on my way to the airport in America. What exactly do they think America is like? I personally only get shot at when I go to the local store; the airport is fine, perfectly safe. One of the guys I worked with asked me how many guns I owned, and seemed almost unsettled to find that I owned none at all. He probably thinks all Germans own a pair of lederhosen and all Argentinians like to invade the Falklands too.

And a final note. The British shouldn't be too fond of their "driving experience", because I found driving in England (I only drove in England, so I'll only blame them) a miserable experience. It isn't because they drive on the wrong side of the road, though they do. And it isn't because the weather was constantly wet and foggy, though it was. And it wasn't because the roads were very busy, though they were. It's the fact that once you get off the motorway, there isn't a single straight road anywhere in England. They do more winding and meandering than my small intestine, and seemingly for even less reason. And the signs! I'm used to America, where roads are generally marked by signs indicating the name of the road. In England, it seems that the roads are marked by destination, not name.

I was trying to find a hotel in Basingstoke, but the map and the road signs never seemed to agree and I kept ending up on the road to Aldermaston. Who knows, maybe Aldermaston would have been more fun; I should have tried it. I hear they do nuclear research there.