cupid_shot_you The presenters are just not funny. The main guy is OK but the other two are just terrible. They they speak they try way to hard to be cool as if they are better than the UK crew. They are horribly wrong. The worst thing about them is that they THINK they are funny. They laugh at the littlest things they do. While the rest of us are sitting there with our pet crickets.Now on to the show itself, too much budget went into this show you can tell by the way the presenters do the test driving and challenges. Every time they do the doughnut burning those tires it makes me want to weep. Every time they crash a nice new car into something, my heart tightens. They have absolutely no respect for the cars they drive.AND They almost always use new cars in their challenges which IMO is stupid. 80% of my love for Top Gear IS their old junk challenges. Top Gear Australia is a huge disappointment. Major modifications needed.My review is based on TG Australia First Season.

lanimae61 It's not often one can think of nothing nice to say, but this is one of those times. BBC took a great show with genuine characters and turned it into this no-hoper, tragic wanna-be, poor mongrel cousin. Instead of witty banter, we get the falsetto "please shut the hell up or I will throw myself off the gap" Steve Pasati. Not to be out done, we aimed for the quick witted Jeremy Clarkson and got this annoying pratt (who is more like that awful Tiff Needle from the OTHER motoring show). If he tells us one more time how great a driver he is and how long he has been doing it professionally, I am going to hunt him down and glue his lips to his exhaust pipe and run his motor at 70,000 million revs or until he bursts or the engine flys apart in sympathy, whichever is sooner. Lastly, where the hell did they get the night club bouncer from? The puerile comments are meant to echo those of the British trio, but for the most part is just silly. The tests are boring and the challenges look ridiculous. NEVER try and imitate something like this which relies so heavily on personality. I wonder if the same idiot who thought this was a good idea also sold "Kath and Kim" to the seppos? Whoever it is needs shooting then drawing and quartering then shooting again then burying in a bog to be dug up again in a few gajillion years as peat to then be thrown on a fire and toasted til golden brown. At least then you might have something slightly useful. The worst bit is that if they weren't trying to be someone else, it might have had half a chance. Get new sets, new scripts and new presenters and try it again, better still DON'T! Just watch the British version and chalk this up to a dreadful nightmare. YUK!

Nick Ward When Top Gear Australia was announced, my immediate reaction was that it would be great to have something covering the side of motoring that Top Gear UK doesn't. When the first episode aired, it was all I could do to stop myself marching in protest against SBS.Rather than try to be unique and entertaining, TGA has instead tried to convince us that we're still watching the UK series. Presenters were chosen to be poor replicas of the originals rather than finding truly funny people. They even try to use all the same jokes and catchphrases. It's only a matter before they start ending with "on that bombshell..." The first episode, featuring a review of soft road cars, had real potential. Here was something incredibly Australian, but it was done so badly that I'm almost ashamed to admit it. Then they tried to copy the Stig intro... and failed. Still, I reserved judgment to give them another chance at it with the second episode.Again there's something very Australian: Ford vs Holden. An ongoing Australian battle. Yet they seemed more interested in drifting than driving. Yes, we know you can drift with them, but try to review something more than just their tarmac performance. The "Best Ute" feature was actually mildly entertaining; watched with the terrible presenters muted and it would have been a good feature.The problem with this show isn't that there's nothing to review, it's that they're trying too hard to copy a brilliant series with far superior presenters.

frozen170180 After just having watched the inaugural episode of Top Gear Australia I must say: It wasn't bad.....for a start. However, it could have been MUCH better: And here's why.First Point: Why not start with the comparison between the FPV F6 and the HSV GTS (I think it was the GTS) and BLOW us all away??? Ohhhhhh what an opener that could have been!!!!!! And oh what a letdown it was settling for a soft roader comparison instead (I know these cars are popular with us Australians, but so are our TITANIC battles between Ford and Holden)!!!! I feel slightly ripped off having had SBS play scenes from the F6-GTS comparison only to have Cox announce 'what you've all been waiting for' will appear next week (And yes you can bet I'll be watching next week).Second point: The comparison between the soft roaders....was it a comparison or just 3 dudes having a play? There was no discussion at the end of the comparison between the three hosts as to which car won the day....even if the hosts do end up disagreeing at the end it's still nice to know.Third Point: The Franchise. Yes Top Gear is borrowed from the UK version, and it needs to follow a certain formula. But there is no way in hell that Charlie Cox, Warren Brown, and Steve Pizzati can be expected to manufacture the sheer charisma that their Top Gear opposites in the UK have. They need to be left alone to create something of their own. Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond have this truly wonderful-to-watch magic style of their own that should not be attempted to be replicated as I saw in Top Gear Aus: Just won't work, the Aussie hosts will just end up looking like clunky fools, and the show will be ridiculed. Charlie Cox should not be billed as Australia's version of Jeremy Clarkson, there can only be one Clarkson. Warren Brown should not be billed as Australia's version of James May, there can only be one May. And Steve Pizzati...I didn't get the feeling the show was trying to manipulate him into being an Aussie Richard Hammond as much as the other two were. I had the fortunate opportunity to see Warren Brown compete in a Peking to Paris drive, recreating a trek that was made at the turn of the 20th century. He was brilliant in that, so I suspect that if allowed, these Australian hosts are capable of coming up with a magic of their own.Forth point: The test track. The camera angles were bad, I didn't get a feel for how the cars were responding to the turns or get a feeling for just how quick they were racing around the track (The Skyline didn't look as quick as it so obviously was), the track didn't seem long enough, and it all seemed like a bit of a blur.Fifth point: Weren't you lot hamming it up a bit with the chop up and pasting of footage when you dipped Brown into the sea with those sharks? It was crap! That entire part of the show wasn't as scary as it could have been. I think it's fair to say.....you lot made a meal outta that one :PConclusion: Top Gear Australia has a lot of work to be done to it to get it rolling smoothly, mainly camera work on moving car footage around that track, the track itself should be slightly longer, hosts need to be left to develop a personality of their own, but all in all, it passed..only just!