So, I’m supposed to believe that three mooks who have a total of 45 minutes each behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler, are let loose on public highways despite none of them having an appropriate license, and with at least one of the trucks containing boxes of fireworks and lit, flaming charcoal grills.
Yeah, right. I call shenanigans, to say the least.
It’s called “entertainment”.
C’mon. Make it at least slightly plausible; that’s really all I ask.
You have to watch it with an air of suspended disbelief - otherwise you’ll start wondering (for example) just how that camera happened to be in the perfect spot to catch the snowboarder hitting the ramp and jumping over the road at the exact moment the car passes underneath as they “race” down the mountain…
I can just imagine how the conversation went with their lawyers and insurance agents when they said they were going to send three TV hosts without CDLs out on the roads in semis, and that one of them just happens to have a cargo of open flames and explosives.
I really hope the roadside fireworks display and field-burning was staged and that the truck never moved when the fires were burning. Or at the very least, the interior shots were done on the proverbial closed course. Likewise the paint and pianos - a moving piano would probably punch a cartoonish piano-shaped hole in the side of a trailer, then land on top of someone’s car.
If Michigan didn’t already have a law against transportation of lit barbecue grills then, they probably do now. 
It’s been a while since I’ve seen that episode - but weren’t the burny bits (if not all of it) on a closed test track?
…and I just looked - it was all on a closed track.
See here - it was episode one.
The entire scene was not on public roads, which any regular watcher of the series would know since they use it on a regular basis.
As mentioned above, you often have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit when watching this show. The specials, in particular, seem to be riddled with ever more bizarre contrivances presented as “real”. The recent episode from India was especially bad.
I’m mostly cool with this. However, one episode that actually bugged me a bit was the Polar Special from 2007, which was pitched as the Top Gear team driving a Toyota Hilux to the North Pole. Actually, they didn’t, they drove one from the town of Resolute, Canada, to the 1996 location of the magnetic North Pole, which also happens to be the finishing point for a yearly race called the Polar Challenge. The distance is about 400 miles.
The episode would have been just as cool if they had explained this, but the viewer is led to believe that they’re going to the Geographic North Pole. Problem is, that’s another not insignificant 800 miles further north, all of it ice cap. So, yeah, the difference is kind of important.
I suspect, though, that part of the problem was that Jeremy Clarkson didn’t know where the heck he was, never mind understanding the difference between the geographic and the magnetic poles. He talks about the Polar episode in a later appearance on QI, and complains that his compass needle didn’t spin around, like he had been told that it would. Well, doh, Jeremy, you should have tried that trick about eleven years earlier. In 2007, the North Magnetic Pole had moved about another 300 miles further north.
Edit: Hang on, concerning the discussion above about the burning trucks, are we mixing up American Top Gear with a similar episode on British Top Gear? :dubious: Top Gear, for me, is the British show, I’ve never seen the American version.
Was this the BBC version, or the American version?
Even though I’m an atheist I found their Christmas special where they wound up in Bethlehem a tad offensive. Well its conclusion. A shame really as I enjoyed the rest of the episode.
It was the US edition.
I’m certain it was. In one of the shots of Rutledge opening the trailer door, a bunch of volunteer firemen could clearly be seen milling around in the background.
Then there’s whole deal with the fireworks magically only going off when the door was opened. Twice. :rolleyes:
Then there was the ‘accidental’ collision with the parked car. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Yeah, I know, it’s just TV, but they could have done easily done this episode as a tale of the TG guys attempting to pass a CDL exam without any prior training, and it would have been just as, if not more, effective. Shots of a stone-faced Michigan driving examiner looking on while they ground through the gears and dropped trailer wheels in ditches would have been comedy gold. If they really had to set off fireworks and knock over pianos to keep viewer interest, they could have clearly stated it was done it on the closed course rather than implying it was on the Interstate.
Lastly, IIRC the UK show at least paid lip service to occasionally testing and rating cars amongst all the silly, contrived stunts. The US version seems to have completely abandoned that notion. Or have I missed some episodes somewhere?
Oh, well, guess I’ll just change my allegiance to Top Shot, where there clearly is no gimmickry whatever. 
Added “US” to title for better clarity.
As an atheist, I found the conclusion of their Christmas Special very funny.
Regarding the US Top Gear, I think they had hired the Wrong Adam. They should have dumped Adam F. after the first season, and gotten Adam Corrola. He’s still an ass, but at least he knows his way around cars.
Calling them “mooks” was the giveaway. The Top Gear UK guys are “morons.”
They did explain this in the episode. It’s right at the start. (Maybe they didn’t in the advertising?)
However they’re way funnier morons. But Clarkson should soon start running out of population groups to offend.
And when UK Top Gear did the semi-trailer challenge including the part with the open flame (leading to eventual flaming semitrailer driving up the hill, natch) some years back, they did so clearly in a closed test circuit.
Clarkson is an opinionated boob, but May and Hammond seem to be reasonably intelligent. Are they morons because they are allowed to act out their inner moron or is it because all guys are morons, whether you give them permission or not? As I age I lean more towards the latter.
They did approach him first but he was shooting a pilot for one of the networks at the time. Carolla did get a car show on speed network that was cancelled, which I did like while it was till on the air.