The past couple of years have seen the rise of a strange branch of motorsports, an uneasy alliance between the ‘Xtreme’ generation of sports sponsors and the motoring world that’s resulted in a new event in the X-Games and chaps like Ken Block (I still have a Blockhead cap somewhere, cheers Dennis!) earning the respect of a new audience world-wide for his amazing prowess on four wheels.

More recently, we’ve had a superstar of the FMX world – Travis Pastrana – garnering a stupid amount of publicity and Generation-X mindshare by jumping his Subaru Impreza a world-record distance over a river.  This is where I have to hold my hand up and say enough is enough;  The hype and publicity surrounding this sort of thing completely outweighs the act itself  – it’s basic and fairly well controlled mathematics and to me it cheapens the stuff that Travis does outside of this circus.  I’m not saying that jumping cars isn’t pretty fucking ace, it’s just the promotion that’s beyond ridiculous.

Anyway, If you want to see some real skill on four wheels, check out the two videos below.  Not only are these incredible in terms of the talent required to drive a car in such a fashion, the risks involved are real and up there with what it takes to flip a set of doubles on a motorcross bike:

Top Gear is, hands down, my favourite show on TV.  You can argue all you want about whether it’s really still a show about three blokes who love cars any more and if it’s “jumped the shark” (I hate that  term), but I still love it.

This season so far has been great, and I’ve nearly fallen out of my chair a few times thanks not only to the sound of that Lamborghini LP560-4 or the Zonda F Roadster but because of some of the background music.  It seems that whoever is picking tunes for the show now actually has some real taste.  So far I’ve heard:

• Trans Am
• Fuck Buttons (two songs on the same episode)
• Mogwai (two songs on different episodes)
• The Jesus Lizard (!!!)
• Beastie Boys

With the obvious exception of the Beasties, the likeliness of hearing any of these bands on any kind of mainstream medium is pretty slim (yeah I know The Jesus Lizard did actually record for TOTP once…), but to hear them set to some of the most stunning machinery known to man on one of the most popular TV shows on the planet is totally fucking unreal.

Good work BBC.

8 countries, 8 cars (including an M6 and a Z4 Alpina), and 1,750 miles.  Fletch will eventually lend his literary skills to writing something about it, but in the meantime here’s some photos:

You’ll be glad to know that the M5 didn’t skip a beat (even when Chris was driving…), apart from serious brake fade coming down the Stelvio, so that’s one AP BBK to add to the list when I eventually sort out a job and earn some money.

Can’t wait to do it again.

Update: See Fletch’s write up over here!

On the face of it, 1600 miles of driving in three days across various parts of Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy) might seem a bit crazy. But when you do it in some of Bayeriche’s finest (an E39 M5, a Z3 M Coupe, a Z4 and a 745i) and cover some of Europe’s best roads you start to understand the appeal. The roads and views we encountered have to be seen to be believed, and thanks to the miracle of technology that is the Internet you can right here. They’re up on Facebook as well but that does a pretty good job of mangling colour profiles and compression so they look a bit cack. I’ll whack them up onto Flickr too at some point just for good measure.

I didn’t take as many shots as I like as I spent approx. 99% of my waking time over the weekend behind the wheel but there’s a few good ones in there. Fletch took a shit load as well with both his camera and mine, and he’ll no doubt write something more descriptive fairly shortly. All in all it was an amazing weekend, great roads and good people to be on a road trip with. Highlights for me had to be Faz’s physics-defying driving in the 745i, Fletch’s ability to control the weather by singing various songs, Matt’s psychotic overtaking manouvres, and the views from along / around Great St. Bernard’s pass.

So when’s the next trip? :-)

After two years of talking about it I finally went out and bought an E39 BMW M5, which I picked up last Friday from a BMW dealership in Maidstone. It’s a 2002 with 55k 56k miles in Lakeside Blue, black nappa leather interior, satnav, and a bunch of other extras. I’ve spent all weekend cruising round with the biggest smile on my face as it’s nothing short of immense to drive, covering roughly 800 miles in just a couple of days.

Unfortunately, that smile didn’t last as it broke down earlier today just as I left the M4. I was actually on my way back to the dealer to get something minor checked out when I pulled off the motorway at the exit, engaged third – or attempted to – and went precisely nowhere. The engine revs fine, but the clutch doesn’t seem to engage at all. So that was that, I sat at the side of the road somewhat nonplussed with the odd random past driving beeping their horn at me (another problem with owning an M5…) whilst waiting for the rescue truck to take the car back to the dealer.

No idea what it is yet but the premium for purchasing an approved used BMW has already saved me, with the recovery being free as well as the courtesy car (a very nice new 320d Touring), and the work done will be under warranty so I shouldn’t have to worry about any kind of obscene bill. One of those things I guess….