'Top Gear' changes gears, not direction

20 May 2016 - 09:11 By Yolisa Mkele

If you're tickled by the idea of acting like a nine-year-old driving around in cool cars with your mates, then there's a good chance you've dreamed of being a Top Gear presenter.Messrs Hammond, Clarkson and May have spent the last decade making the idea of being an infantile middle-aged man with a pot belly and thinning hair look thoroughly entertaining.Sadly, for some, the three amigos have migrated to more digital pastures leaving one of the world's most popular shows (with a viewership of around 350million) in the hands of a merry band of car fanatics.Chris Harris, a racing driver and one of the show's seven new presenters said: "We knew we had to steer away from the three amigos doing their thing. Those guys were the best in the world at what they did. To try to imitate them would have been a massive mistake."Harris's co-hosts include fellow racing driver and Nuremberg Ring race track specialist Sabine Schmidt, Ferrari connoisseur Chris Evans, former Friends star Matt Le Blanc, motoring journalist Rory Reid, former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan and the enigmatic Stig."Of course there's going to be comedy in there as well as some hardcore car reviewing. What you're not going to have is a revolutionary product that bears no resemblance to what we had before. Instead, we're creating an evolution of what went before," said Harris.Part of that evolution includes putting a race car driver, who once failed his driver's licence test, at the helm of a show that's aired in more countries than a UN general assembly. Another is a change in chemistry that made the previous hosts so much fun to watch."Chemistry is not something you can just ask for on demand. Go back and watch the first series of the last three guys and you'll see that there wasn't much chemistry. It takes time. Already there are some chemistries building between some of us," said Harris.With that said, the Top Gear code is not a tough one to crack.All you really need is some banter, a splash of car porn, a celebrity with something to promote, the odd ridiculous challenge, some politically incorrect comments and exotic locales. This season promises a healthy helping of just that.Top Gear airs on June 1 on DStv..

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