Polestar 2.2

Was it really April 2024 when I reported on the stupid naming system that Polestar were to use on their model range?

Yes! 

According to their boss, Thomas Ingenlath, the Polestar 2 would be replaced with the Polestar n where

n = the next integer not already assigned to a Polestar.

I pointed out at the time, the folly of doing that. 

Just like in 2018 when I pointed out the folly of choosing Paddy McGuinness & Freddie Flintoff to present Top Gear.

I was proved correct.

Eventually.

Auto Express have this story today about the replacement for the Polestar 2.

It's headlined, "New Polestar 2 to lose SUV looks and embrace its sporty saloon side"

Apart from anything else, I don't think the Polestar 2 does look like an SUV - which is probably why I like it.

Anyway, I clicked on the link for their guess at what it would look like and found this:

Which made be think, "That doesn't look like a sporty saloon - where's the boot?"

Then I worked out that their link had taken me to a page of guesses or "renderings" that didn't actually include the new Polestar 2.  That particular picture was an attempt at what a future MG will look like.

Then I worked out that the picture at the top of the story was their guess: 

 

That doesn't look like it will "lose SUV looks and embrace its sporty saloon side."

 

It just looks like the current one - which already looks like a sporty non-SUV.

 

Which will probably be known as the 2 Mark II.

 

While the boss now appears to be known as Michael Lohscheller.

They've taken the shine off Top Gear Magazine.

It's June 1st!  This means that the July issue of Top Gear Magazine has appeared in my porch.

I knew it was going to be different.  In the June edition, the regular columnists, Andy Franklin, Paul Horrell and Sam Philip pointed out that they were doing their last columns for the magazine.  They haven't been sacked or anything, but recently appointed editor-in-chief Jack Rix has decided that it is time to stamp his own style on the publication and shift a few things around - although he chooses not to mention it in his regular introduction piece.

Columnists in the past have often been the Top Gear TV presenters - notably, at it's peak, Clarkson, Hammond & May. And, more recently Chris Harris - but never Flintoff or McGuinness - maybe because THEY ARE NOT MOTORING JOURNALISTS!

Clarkson, Hammond & May were columnising back in 2010 when I last reported on a revamp of the mag.  That coincided with the recently outgone editor-in-chief first taking over.  The magazine has evolved in those 14 years and we have now lost a couple of features that I really liked such as Mark Riccioni's monthly bemoaning of his fleet of vehicles and the monthly history of a different car manufacturer (although last month the manufacturer was Lego)

The new columnists are Mike Channell (Radio Active anyone?) who I fear is going to be talking about gaming every month, Jethro Bovington who they have been trying to get us used to for a while now and Natalie Pinkham who I fear is going to be talking about F1 every month.

Oh yes, and she's a woman.

Going back to 2010, the magazine was printed on glossy paper.  Magazines in general used to be referred to as "the glossies."

You can't call them that now because most of them aren't.  Cost cutting.  Top Gear lost its glossiness many years ago but at least the front and back covers were still glossy.

Until today.  Look how dull and lifeless it looks in my photo.

It's lost its shine - inside and out?

In 2010 I asked and answered these questions...

So, is it a change for the worse?

No.

Is it a change for the better?

Dunno.

Is it change for change's sake?

Maybe.

Can you spare some change?

Go away.

Today I say...

So, is it a change for the worse?

Maybe.

Is it a change for the better?

Not so far.

Is it change for change's sake?

Maybe.

Can you spare some change?

Go away.

Hmmm.

Question Time

But that isn't Question Time!

No, that isn't the right-leaning political show - that is actually A Question of Sport.

But last time I actually mentioned Question Time, I titled it "A Question of Sport" so this makes up for it.

Anyway, the question Paddy McGuinness must be asking himself is, "What have I done to upset the BBC?"

After several years of being given (inappropriately) lots of TV shows that he really shouldn't be fronting, first Top Gear gets canned and now A Question of Sport has gone the same way.

As I have previously stated, I DO LIKE PADDY McGUINNESS!

But not for Top Gear.  And I know the Question of Sport fans preferred Sue Barker - a UK tour of that team drew in the crowds after they were booted off showing that the BBC sometimes make daft decisions - I refer you back to my 2018 Post M'Lud.

The BBC needs to be careful - I mentioned earlier this month that YouTube is now my main source of motoring information, education and entertainment - Lord Reith should be spinning in his grave.

I am actually subscribed to 14 motoring YouTube channels (15 if you include Dominic Chinea)

There are the three I really like who specialise in driving old cars with bits of maintenance jobs and other interesting stuff interspersed:

• Hub Nut - the nerdy one
• Idriveaclassic - the woman one
• Twin Cam - the young one

My highlight of the week is Dennis Collins' Coffee Walk on a Friday which also usually involves food and there is his Dallas-based neighbour Gas Monkey Garage.  The other American ones are:

• Jay Leno's Garage
• TFL Classics

There are the electric ones:

• Electric Classic Cars - the Welsh one
• The Fully Charged Show - the Kryten one

There is Top Gear which is a good addition to Top Gear Magazine although I actually prefer reading their stuff but it is nice to hear the voices of their journalists.  And if you want Clarkson, May & Hammond there is DriveTribe - mostly Hammond these days.

The Late Brake Show is Jonny Smith's vehicle (if you'll pardon the pun) - very entertaining, especially his barn find episodes.

Great British Car Journey is these people - and they have added Sarah Crabtree.

And finally, there is Edd China - who I'm actually a bit worried about.  He was the highlight of my week for a very long time but hasn't posted anything new in ages.

So there you go - and here I go.

To catch up on some YouTube.

Tinie Package

Yo!

Apparently Tinie Tempah now calls himself just "Tinie."

Dropped the surname.

Has he had an embarrassing divorce like Cheryl or Rylan or Roseanne?

Apparently not.

But he is fronting a new car show - Bangers: Mad for Cars.

Which, based on the first two episodes, is badly mis-named.

A Sierra Cosworth, a Volvo 850R, a Porsche 911 and a Honda NSX can hardly be purchased for banger money.

There are only 4 episodes and so far, I'm up for watching the rest.

Tinie is not a racing driver or a motoring journalist so there is an element of my (one of many) pet peeve here in that he shouldn't be fronting a car show.  Although he's a bit better than Paddy McGuinness & Freddie Flintoff - but just as crashy.

His side-kick is a racing driver.  Not one I'd heard of before but she has had a little success (dare I say a tinie amount?) and is by far a better motoring presenter than Tinie.  Meet Naomi Schiff:

Interesting that she is wearing a ROKiT logo there.  They sponsor Nicholas Hamilton, younger brother of her mate Lewis. I just realised that I haven't a clue what ROKiT actually do so I looked them up.

It seems they do everything.

Meanwhile, back to the show. Tinie & Naomi have to choose a car each and perform some sort of challenge down at Llandow Circuit overseen by a local.  But most of the show is Tinie trying to choose his car - which is actually quite interesting in parts.

He also spends a lot of time driving around in his own G-Wagen.

Wouldn't you have thought that if he wanted a 4x4, he'd have got a Disc-Overy.

A Question of Sport

I don't watch A Question of Sport.  It's awful since they parachuted in Paddy McGuinness.

I did however watch a sportsman on Question Time.

I refer to Sebastian Vettel.

I haven't watched Question Time in ages - I tended not to like it because of the Gammons in the audience.  I wasn't going to watch this one despite Seb being on it but then I spotted that comedian Geoff Norcott was also on it so I gave it a go.  Geoff Norcott's hand was the last one I shook before Covid meant that we couldn't do that any more.

It has improved.  There was only one right-wing pillock in the audience and he suitably demonstrated his pillockness.

Seb didn't actually say too much apart from pointing out that Brexit is a mess and admitting to being a bit of a hypocrite about thinking green while travelling the World racing cars.  But he did give a very good account of himself in a debating programme using a second language and he really impressed Planet f1's Finley Crebolder.  I suspect Lewis Hamilton wouldn't have been as eloquent.

Today's sport on TV is the Women's FA Cup Final - I'm not watching it.  I suspect a lot of people aren't watching it which might be why ITV Sport have decided to showcase the middle BTCC Race today on ITV1 (also known as "ITV") rather than the usual ITV4.  This features Lewis Hamilton's brother and Rick Parfitt's son but they are always at the back of the field so don't tend to get much of a mention.

I found it a bit irritating because the presenters and commentators were trying to explain everything to the new viewers but they did get a very interesting race with plenty of action.

ITV4 meanwhile showed Twins.

So the question of sport for ITV is: How many people will watch the third race today?

Powerless

The BBC have had a go at Boris Johnson today.

Unusually.

Political reporter Jennifer Scott was much harsher than Laura Kuenssberg would have been.

Good.

Basically, Johnson made a speech which was supposed to promote electric motoring and green business to the CBI.  But he lost his place and waffled on about Peppa Pig World for a bit making a few lame jokes.

Embarrassing.

An earlier version of the Jennifer Scott story had lots of motoring references about him taking the wrong turn and other such also lame jokes.  That version seems to have disappeared.

Probably for the best.

Now, talking about electric cars and the BBC and embarrassing, did you see Top Gear this weekend?

After a promising series opener last week with a very moving tribute to Eddie Kidd, this week they went caravanning using luxury electric cars as their tow-cars. It included a puerile and pointless attempt to lap their cars around the top of a mountain while eating stronger and stronger chillies culminating in Paddy McGuinness spitting out a mouthful of milk over Freddie Flintoff and the interior of a Mercedes EQC.

They then had to drive to Barnard Castle (which brings us back to Johnson embarrassment) without recharging - and they ran out of charge.  Actually, Chris Harris did get there but only by ditching his caravan so the whole exercise was a waste of time.

There is only one solution to both of these situations.

Diabolical

I like Paddy McGuinness.  I find him funny.  I loved him in Phoenix Nights.

BUT GOD IS HE ANNOYING IN TOP GEAR!?

I stated when they were first announced, that this did not feel to me to be a good combination of presenters.

Apart from a few lapses, the first series wasn't too awful. But last week, when they were racing around the karting track in Bolton, I just got more and more annoyed with Paddy messing around - I reckon he caused the Freddie crash by spraying him with Cola.

Now this week, he trashes a Lambo!

Skidded on oil my foot!

I hated the car park musical chairs too - just seemed like pointless damage.

Did enjoy Freddie doing the 200mph and the Wheel of Death bit though.

Or am I just old?

Gear Change - Two to One

The Guardian's Stuart Heritage has two items of Paddy McGuinness news for us this week.

I haven't worked him out yet - Heritage not McGuinness - I do know he's better than Keith Watson of "The Metro" - but that's not difficult.  I think for one thing, he does actually know about the show he is talking about.

Always useful in a media journalist that.

In the story that Top Gear is to be moved from BBC2 to BBC1, he makes some very valid points including that the move has been designed to “attract younger viewers and safeguard the future of the licence fee” but younger viewers (and myself) tend to watch shows on catch-up so won't associate it with a particular channel anyway.

But, in the story that ITV are scrapping "Take Me Out" he says, "...you would have to be a monster not to be a little sad about its death."

Guess I must be a monster then.

I still don't approve of the current TG line-up but have to agree with Stuart that this series is very successful - possibly because it is now no longer a "mouldy old car show".

His words not mine - I like car shows and want more of them so would never stick the adjective "mouldy" in front of one - unless they were really crap - like the last two series of Driven or like "I Want That Car"

But Top Gear isn't crap.

It's just lost its way as a car show.  The bungee last week could have been done sitting in a bathtub (although I did enjoy the deceit that leaving the handbrake on would stop him).

The rear axle coming off the Firebird was very funny - please tell me that wasn't faked.

But having just the one motoring expert is restricting.  Don't tell Michael Gove,

 

...but we need more experts.  Otherwise, dumb stuff that is popular comes to the forefront:

Bully For You

We're three episodes in now.

Two to go.

Another short series.

It was starting to grow on me a bit.

But last night's show began to confirm my fears.

The bit last week when Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle and star of his new film Himesh Patel had to drive at speed at a closing barrier seemed a bit childish and unnecessary.

This week they had Olympic Horsewoman and Queen's Grand-daughter Zara Tindall together with her England Rugby star husband Mike driving a Jag at speed between two bollards for no good reason.

I suppose it makes the interviews a bit shorter for them but I'd rather know a bit more about the guests than see this.

 

I'm hoping that TG doesn't go the same way as Driven did during its death throes - that was such a shame.

But the bit that made me feel really uncomfortable was when Paddy and Freddie were stopping Chris from winning the stuff-as-much-stuff-into-a-family-car competition.

It looks like I wasn't alone with the word "bullying" coming into my head.  Here's the Metro (the Newspaper) report on the ensuing Twitter-storm.

 

I wonder if that is why they got shut of Rory Reid - they can cope with accusations of bullying but racist bullying would be going too far.

 

Chris has taken to Twitter himself to say that he didn't feel victimised and that the others are really kind people.

 

I suppose he had to do that or they'd have beaten him up.

27 Not Out?

Series 27 episode 1 of Top Gear has aired.

The one I was hoping not to like.

Well, it wasn't awful.  The relationships between the three presenters is promising and given that I like all three of them then I suppose that was always likely to be the case.

The BBC are bigging it up as you would expect.  They say that the critics give it "warm praise."  But then they open up that story to the Gammons who infest the BBC News Website with the predicted result.  I do hope that anyone who reads the comments on BBC News doesn't think that they are indicative of British attitudes.

So what did I think?  I enjoyed the Ethiopia bit.  I also enjoyed the Ferrari and McLaren bit but the fact Chris had to do it just shows that we have gone from three car experts (James, Jeremy & Richard) down to two and a half car experts (Chris, Rory & Matt) down to one car expert (Chris) - this will hamper what Top Gear is meant to be and also hamper the discussions within the banter.

Based on episode 1, I am willing to give it another go - I'll probably last the series but I don't see myself being bowled over.

Am I Going to be Disappointed on Father's Day?

Unfortunately, I expect so.

And there's nothing my children can do about it.

You see the BBC have chosen Father's Day to begin the new series of Top Gear.

Radio Times have been getting very excited about it.

It's on the front cover:

They also have this feature and this article online in which Chris Harris claims the new team will be better than Jeremy, James & Richard.

No it won't.

One preview clip presented to journalists featured Flintoff rubbing his unwashed hands over Harris after visiting the toilet.

Rory Reid's demotion is more pronounced too with the axing of his Extra Gear show.

I'll still be watching - I've got to give it a fair chance - but I can't believe that I'll be wanting it to fail. And maybe it won't - maybe I'll like it.

And maybe Brexit will be a success.

If it Ain't Broke - DON'T FIX IT!

Up until recently, Simon Mayo presented the Radio 2 Drivetime slot entertaining commuters on their way home from work each evening.

Meanwhile, Jo Whiley had a slot later in the evening - a more musically focussed show.

Two very talented broadcasters with two very enjoyable shows in my opinion.

And in the opinion of lots of other Radio 2 listeners. 

Then some bright-spark at the BBC, decided to combine their two shows - extend the Drivetime show by one hour and have the two of them as co-presenters.

We didn't think that would work.

It didn't.

From the start it was obvious that the chemistry between them, no matter how hard they tried to make it work, just wasn't there.

Listeners were upset - there were many letters of protest in The Radio Times and directly to the BBC. So much so, that Radio 2 had to offer an official response to complaints.

They stubbornly claimed that: "Every new show needs time to settle down and so we hope listeners will continue to listen and give it a chance."

Anyway, today the end of the show was announced.  Jo is moving to a new slot from 7-9 which is good news but Simon is leaving Radio 2 all together.  Sad face.

So what has this got to do with cars (apart from the tenuous link to driving home)?

Nothing - except that today the BBC also announced a new line up for Top Gear.  They are demoting Rory Reid and bringing in Freddie Flintoff & Paddy McGuinness.

Now I like Freddie Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness - but they are not motoring show presenters.

It was also very brave in an un-politically-correct way of the BBC to demote the only black presenter of Top Gear - I'm sure someone will get a telling-off for that one.

I know they had to find a replacement for Matt Leblanc - but there are plenty of motoring journalists and racing drivers out there rather than opting for celebrity "petrol-heads" - this line up just looks two-thirds wrong:

Now I don't mind having a celebrity petrol-head in there from time to time - Ronnie O'Sullivan seems OK helping out in the Team Tests in the latest series of Fifth Gear. (I'm quite enjoying the latest series - even if I can never remember which channel they are on - I wish they'd go back to Channel 5 and stay there)

 

But I suppose the BBC know what they are doing.

 

After all, they've never made a similar mistake before have they?