Farewell, Top Gear – you won’t be missed (and I’m a petrolhead)

As bureaucratic euphemisms go, saying that the BBC show Top Gear is to be “rested for the foreseeable future” is a rather lovely one – clearly meaning that the programme is, well, dead – but offering its still considerable fan base the hope that one day it might roar back onto their screens.

It’s a gentle, kind form of broadcasting euthanasia, with a touch of understatement. “Rested for the foreseeable future” would suit a comic’s headstone.

So farewell, then,Top Gear, compromised and eventually consumed by its own vanities. The terrible accident involving Freddie Flintoff, which left him with life-altering injuries, clearly made BBC execs think, again, about whether exposing their presenters to such dangers was really worth it. The previous near-death experience of Richard Hammond should have shut down the show for good.

Jeremy Clarkson’s history of allegedly or actual racist remarks and a physical assault on a producer did end his time with Top Gear, at which point Hammond and James May also left the team. However well justified, for many of the viewers, that castrated the programme – and the various replacements, including a surprisingly poor performance by Chris Evans, meant it was always going to be in a state of gentle decline.

I can’t say I’m surprised that it’s “up on bricks”, as we petrolheads say about “restoration projects” that never get finished. Nor am I sorry. In the Clarkson era the show became almost pure entertainment, and highly successful – but the antics of the presenters made watching it incredibly painful because it was just so puerile and snobby. There was far too drooling over too much exotica and super cars, and not enough about why an SUVs shouldn’t be the default choice of anyone who doesn’t live on a farm.

Caravans and their owners were a particular focus of their irrational hatred, and it was inevitable that “the boys” were going to blow one up. British Leyland’s family cars from the 1970s, affordable and never as bad as supposed, were also the subjects of facile vandalism, I seem to recall – filling them up with water to “prove” they leaked, which they would because no vehicle, not even a W140 S-Class Mercedes-Benz, is built to be airtight.

For some reason – or no reason – Clarkson drove an old Toyota Hilux pick-up into some ancient listed tree as part of an effort to show just how indestructible the legendary model is. I’m not sure the tree survived. When they got to the stage of damaging human beings they should really have sent Top Gear for scrap.

The other problem with Top Gear was that its global success and vast budgets meant that no other broadcaster or production company could possibly compete with it – which is why it became rather stale and predictable in a its formats: laughing at foreigners on fancy road trips was an especially regrettable habit.

Clarkson fitting a toilet on the boot of his Jaguar XJ-S because “everyone who comes to India gets the trots” was one low point. So was the line about farting Mexicans. Embarrassing.

Now they have trailered Top Gear away, it might be nice to have a show about cars that actually helps people buy and enjoy them in the real world. I never found them driving a (perfectly usable) Morris Marina to destruction particularly enlivening; but I did want to understand the environmental consequences of dumping petrol for batteries.

Twin revolutions – autonomous technology and electric vehicles – are about to transform the scene (and the world’s car makers are still producing novel, beautiful and exciting products) but there hasn’t been anything on TV that covers them for decades – not, in fact, since the original Top Gear series in the 1970s and 1980s.

Top Gear became a crashing cliche towards the end, as well as inflicting unacceptable damage on its presenters, and a bit of an anachronism: Top Gear now is a poor vehicle now for either entertainment or journalism. For its motoring coverage I’d prefer the BBC to return to its core missions – inform, educate, entertain.