Top Gear drove to the north pole and did a victory dance at 78 degrees, 35 minutes, 7 seconds. Why is that the location of the pole, and not 0?
What is “Top Gear”?
By definition, the North Pole is at 90 degrees latitude north. The Magnetic North Pole is currently at about 82 degrees north, so I don’t know where they thought they were.
What longitude were they at?
Is that a longitude? Since all lines of longitude pass through the poles, longitude is undefined at those points. Move any distance away from the pole and longitude becomes meaningful.
Top Gear is a British TV programme (nominally) about cars.
I was guessing magnetic NP as well, but they seem to be off by a bit. Still, close enough for a TV show.
The Radio Times said they were going to the Magnetic North Pole, though all through the program they just kept calling it the pole. My atlas puts that in the general area they were in, though remember that the magnetic poles do drift.
That’s selling it somewhat short.
Rather than being a British TV programme about cars, it is THE British TV programme about cars to which all other TV programmes about cars aspire. It’s also one of the highest rated programmes on BBC 2.
It won an Emmy for Best Unscripted TV Show.
It’s also coming to the US, with a version made especially for the US audience featuring US cars and guests but hosted by the British trio (and The Stig and probably Top Gear Dog too).
That will be interesting, because generally speaking, they’ve displayed a fairly uniform contempt of US-manufactured cars.
According to Wikipedia, the latitude given in the OP is the position measured in 1996, a long way from the estimated current position mentioned by Baldwin.
I missed the last five minutes of that one due to an urgent need to be in a pub. Did the Hamster catch up in the end?
I wonder if they showed the Top Gear US special over there (I think TG is shown on Discovery in the US)?
Extremely funny, until it got to New Orleans where they gave away their cars to the victims of Katrina who needed them.
I think an appropriate next stunt for Top Gear would be to attach water skis to three cheap runabouts, and see if they can jump those cars over, I dunno, some kind of aquatic animal maybe. That would be good.
Hammond lost, despite Clarkson’s best efforts to write the Toyota off.
If Top Gear-US does not display a fairly uniform contempt of US-manufactured cars, what is the point of filming it? 
Si
Leap the jumbo squid?
But how could they ever follow that up?
I did a double take on that post above, despite the show where they took a Cadillac, pick up and some unseemly 1980s “muscle” car on the road, they’ve not shown much love for US cars.
Ahh, magnetic north.
I assume that the route to true north would have required too much fuel, or too much money, or it was known that the chances of falling through the ice were way too high.
Yes, Clarkson shows his insecurities by slagging American cars almost universally. Honestly, I really do think that he has a bit of a complex about being British, and he has to insist that they are the roxxor at the thing he cares most about: designing and building cars. Although he did insult Rover to the point that he may have been the thing that pushed it over the edge into oblivion.
About the actual trip, the truck won only with the support of two support vehicles which replaced a shock, remounted a tire, and probably something else I forgot.
Not really, he has no love for what were two of the biggest car manufacturing bastions of the UK, British Leyland/Rover and Vauxhall.
Not so fast. As I learned from checking www.finalgear.com before swinging by the Dope, Jeremy has rejected the idea. The finalgear homepage links to this Sun Online article.
And despite Jeremy’s slagging of American cars, do recall that he recently bought a Ford GT (and proceeded to make fun of it). He doesn’t completely slag them - he agrees they go fast - just not around corners.
- From an American Top Gear fan, who religiously downloads the show via bittorrent (damn, someone should have mentioned there would be spoilers in this thread!). I first learned of it via a few showings on Discovery, but found out they were a few years old.
Clarkson liked the GT, but sent it back over a quibble to do with the alarm.