Top Gear (partially found American pilots to British show; 2005-2008)

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Top Gear Logo.jpg

The logo for Top Gear.

Status: Lost


"Top Gear" was a motoring juggernaut starting with it's current format in the early 2000's and continuing until mid 2010s. During that period the format was sold off to many different interested countries including Russia, Australia, Korea, Italy, France, the United States and China. Though the American rights were one of the first to be sold off, it was one of the last to be put into full production.

The Discovery Pilot

A still from the Discovery pilot.

In late 2005, the Top Gear rights were sold off to Discovery in order to produce an American version of the popular motoring program, this was done by the BBC with minimal input by the original cast and its producers.[1] The hosts for this version was Bruno Massel, John Littlefield and Johnny "Wildboy" (originally thought to be Jonny from survivor fame, this proved to be false).[2] The star in a reasonably priced car was Jon Favreau, it is monumental for being one of the first appearances wherein he announces that he will be helming "Iron Man".[3] NHRA racer, Bruno Massel's demo reel shows the intro whereby Bruno announces that it is like the British version with a "better dental plan".[4] There was no audience for this attempt. The attempt was largely mocked by insiders, as can be seen in the January 2006 issue of "Top Gear Magazine" and as can be heard in a 2016 interview with script editor Richard Porter on the "Smoking Tyre"podcast.[5][6] The Discovery network largely buried the pilot, opting to burn it off on the European and British versions of their channels, sometimes as late as 2008, and opting to air a minimally reshot but localised in language version, using the original hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May.[7] There is some footage of the pilot in Bruno Massel's demo reel.[8]


The NBC Pilot

A still from the NBC pilot.

Two years after the death of the Discovery attempt, NBC announced that it had secured the rights to the format in January of that year.[9] The taping of the pilot took place on 27th of July 2008 and had Adam Carolla, Eric Stromer and Tanner Faust as hosts with David Hasslehoff as the star in the reasonably priced car. This attempt had the backing of the cast and crew of the original. The feedback from those in attendance were very positive. It had a segment where they tested two cars against one another, a challenge which happened in death valley and of course introduced the american cousin of the stig. Though feedback was largely positive and it was clear that there was a lot of excitement about the project, NBC decided to pass on the project as their attempt at resurrecting "Knight Rider" was unsuccessful, this prompted Jeremy Clarkson to state "...they don't get it...".[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Though NBC dropped the pilot, History took up the mantle. Adam Carolla was still interested but because he was already attached to a pilot, he was unable to be apart of it.[17] He went as far as stating that he hoped that it would fail so that he can be apart of it. His pilot failed but he was unable to be apart of it, he did receive his own motoring show, "The Car Show". After NBC passed on it, motoring website, Jalopnik, offered $5000 for a copy, it proved unsuccessful.[18] As of writing this, no footage has leaked and only one photo is available.

Refrences