Driven (partially found British Channel 4 television series; 1998-2002)

Driven's logo used in its first series.

Status: Partially Found

Driven was a British television show broadcast as a televised weekly motoring programme between 1998 and 2002. It was hosted by a variety of presenters, primarily Penny Mallory, Mike Brewer and Jason Plato, to which its previous presenters were James May, Peter Stevens, Jason Barlow and Alex Sibley - alongside guest appearances consisting of Paul Ripley, Jamie Theakston and Amanda Stretton.

The motoring programme aired dominantly on Channel 4 with later-time runs on Channel 4's digital sister channel S4C and had their own home being the legendary 4car.co.uk, which changed to channel4.com/4car by the last series.

History

To begin with, Driven wasn’t Channel 4’s first rodeo into the car-programme arena competing with BBC’s Top Gear. In fact, there was a car show called Ride On, which was presented by primarily Muriel Gray, Nicky Campbell and Alain de Cadenet.

• 

  Ride On’s logo captured from a VHS recording; 09.01.1995

Sadly, Ride On didn’t last too long due to low interest within the programme. In total, it aired from 1994 to 1996.

After the success of Deals On Wheels presented by Mike Brewer & Richard Sutton and Top Gear reaching its absolute peak in 1997-1998, it was then decided to make a proper competitor to rival and overtake Top Gear. Enter: driven.

• 

  Driven's early iteration of the Series 1 logo design.

The rise of Driven

The four dominant faces of Driven would be Jason Barlow, Deals On Wheels Mike Brewer, The Car Show’s James May and McLaren F1’s designer Peter Stevens. The test track used during the first series of Driven was RAF Bentwaters near Ipswich, as confirmed by Mike Brewer.

Even though Peter hasn't appeared as much on group tests compared with the trio, he notably presented the off-road crash test safety item, which was teased in the trailer for the first series.

Driven’s main premise was to provide a perfect balance of consumer advice and entertainment, so viewers could easily understand everything presented to them and also be entertained, no matter the age range or whether they were already interested in cars. The format over the years has become the “entertainment car show” format, which during the show’s peak in 2000-2001 dominated the car-programme arena compared with other shows at the time, such as the British version of MotorWeek on the digital Granada Men & Motors channel, or Pulling Power on ITV1 Central. Top Gear’s reboot would reuse and modify the format, which resulted in Top Gear being successful under the reign of the legendary trio.

This was a one big advantage over Top Gear, which continuously followed the old and established format under the lead of Jeremy Clarkson. Driven proved over the years that you don’t need a legendary motoring journalist to make a show great and most importantly, proved that car shows can be catered to anyone in a fun, creative and fresh approach.

During the 1-mile drag test of the BMW M3 Evolution E36 on Series 1, Episode 7, Mike Brewer was encouraged to drive it hard behind the tracking car. As a result, the car got stone chipped and BMW didn’t like it at all. Driven got banned from borrowing BMWs until 1999.

The first series was the first and last ever series featuring James May as the presenter of Driven, as he would then join Top Gear for Series 41 in early 1999 (as Jeremy Clarkson’s replacement), to only be removed from his role after the last episode of that series. Peter Stevens also left Driven to focus on car design. This is also the last series to use its first styling, as it’ll be changed for later series with more different and flashier styles. James May’s position was filled by National Ladies Rally 1993 champion and former presenter of Channel 5’s The Car Show Penny Mallory.

The reason why James was booted off the show, was because Channel 4 wasn’t particularly okay with “3 blokes” having the same age doing the show and demanded a female presenter to replace him. Mike Brewer couldn’t be booted off the show because he already worked on existing shows (Deals On Wheels) and was doing really great there, neither could Jason Barlow be thrown out of the show, as he was going to be Car magazine’s editor. Series 2 of Driven also ditched their test track and home (small driven branded tent with the driven-branded 1996 Mercedes-Benz [N306 PNR] truck) for the standard car show approach of reviewing cars in various places. This wouldn’t be the last series featuring them having their own home and test track though, but we’d have to wait 3 years for that to come back. More on that later.

Series 2 was the last Driven series that didn’t use the modern driven 100 format in 3-car comparisons. It was also the last series using the intro sequence taken from Series 1, where one of the presenters says “This is Driven!” showing a shot of them driving in 3 different cars, with then the driven text appearing as the video gets shrunk down to a cube being in the i. Series 3 got rid of Series 1’s leftovers, like short idents with the Driven logo and theme tune playing but with no other text at all.

As part of the quality of life changes in Series 3, Jason Barlow introduced viewers to the driven 100 group test format, where cars were scored in four categories; driveability, desirability, practicality and cost of ownership - with each category having up to 25 points maximum and a total of 100 points to obtain. This innovative format would also much later end up on Top Gear in a watered-down form, called the "Top Gear Verdict", where a one car was reviewed in 5 different categories and with a simple 1-10 scoring system.

The peak of Driven

After Series 3 ended airing, Jason Barlow left Driven and on April 2000 joined BBC's Top Gear on a 3-year TV contract, leaving Driven without a presenter until legendary touring car driver Jason Plato joined the team and continued the show until the very end with Penny and Mike. As part of the brand new Driven without Jason Barlow on board, the entire style was revamped - down to even the logo to not resemble its older self, opting for Europa Grotesk SH-Bold Extended font as opposed to the previously-used OCR-B Regular font.

The last episode of the fourth series (or, the first series without Barlow on board) would be particularly important, because that’s where Driven would hit its first world record, where it can be found on this PDF provided by Volvo UK themselves. It was also the only series in the history of the programme to not feature a single spy-shot of any car. By the fifth series starting on 8th January 2001, Driven would ditch the slightly-changed version of the theme for the original 1998 theme, although cut in a way to fit the programme's revised format.

2001 would be the peak for Driven, as this is where they competed against the old Top Gear in full power.

By making it worse for the dying Top Gear with Tiff Needell, Vicki Butler-Henderson, Jason Barlow and Adrian Simpson on board, the sixth series used a brand new design and a remixed soundtrack for their show. Entertainment car shows were here to stay, with the traditional way of car show presenting being seen as more boring than ever, with a handful of shows surviving by providing some form of entertainment value, like later series of Pulling Power or MotorWeek under the lead of Richard Hammond.

The sixth was supposed to have the long-awaited shootout between the Jaguar X-Type, the BMW 3-Series and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class in the first episode of the show alongside the introduction of the all 3 MG Rover Z lineup as possibly Driven 100 cars - however that would change drastically, as the group test was moved to the last episode of the series, the Merc C-Class was swapped for the Audi A4 (very likely because the Top Gear Magazine did a shootout between the exact same cars Driven wanted to make a big duel of, so the cars were possibly changed to not make any further controversy between Driven and Top Gear). As for the MG Z cars, only the ZT (S06E03 & S07E02) and ZS (S06E04) appeared.

During 16th-17th June 2001, Driven was privileged to cover the 24-hour Le Mans 2001 race on behalf of Channel 4, which featured a particular appearance of future-Stig Ben Collins driving for the Bentley team.

The sixth series would mark the end for the Driven 100 format, as the show transitioned much more into being as much unscripted in form as possible and a much bigger emphasis on purely having fun, rather than producing consumer-oriented episodes during their rivalry with the old Top Gear.

Regular car reviews weren’t thrown out of the window and driven 100 relics remained up to Series 8, but they didn’t review the cars on the basis of scoring them with points anymore, in favour of just showing how the cars performed and on their collective opinion which performed better.

The downfall of Driven

By the end of the seventh series in April 2002 - where coincidentally 5th Gear by that point was on its fourth episode of the first series, Driven wanted to return back to their roots by bringing back their home to RAF Bentwaters, but with a hangar and every single item rethought from scratch, including two competitions, where one was about in-car crooning and other about identifying a rally stage (as part of Channel 4's WRC coverage from 2002) and winning that way a Mitsubishi Evo VII.

The eighth series divided the fanbase, as the fans of the old consumer-oriented format shared their negative opinions about the changes on PistonHeads, while there were fans of the new format, as Driven was about to compete with the rebooted 2002 Top Gear under the lead of a returning legendary motormouth Jeremy Clarkson. By that time, Driven was on its deathbed in terms of production budget (which reflected on the items presented), as they went too ambitious with their new and unique features, and as a result, they were paying the price for it.

Driven on its last series introduced an 8-part journey of the Leyland Princess with Celebrity Big Brother star Alex Sibley attempting to make it famous, by making it appear on the front cover of the classiccars magazine, alongside a 2-part Austin Maxi Adventure, where Driven's film crew was instructed to drive the Austin Maxi from where they got, in Orpington, to the Sahara desert, while documenting the Maxi's repairs and the crew's adventure to reach their goal.

Other additions were introduced, such as the Two Car Shootout being an audience-reliant format, where 30 audience members in the studio tested the car alongside the presenters doing their own opinions about it, and even letting the car manufacturers' PR team try to sell the car in a 30-second mark under the segment's name The Tunnel of Spin. Stunt recreations were also introduced, where Driven would try to recreate various stunts in adverts or films, such as the car park stunt from The Driver film, or making a British version of the Peugeot 306 advert aired in India, where a car nut turned a Hindustan Ambassador into the shape of a Peugeot 306 - in the "British version", the Morris Minor 1000 was turned into a look-a-like of the Peugeot 306. Car Sumo was a running competition in the series, where participants (mostly comprised of Driven's production team, as they were running out of production budget) were using their old cars to push themselves from the ring, with the winner being one who remained in the ring last.

Alongside were also lesser-known bits, such as the Citroen 2CV challenge, where the audience was tasked to drive a Citroen 2CV through a ploughed field doing corners with a basket of eggs on the bonnet, the "Welcome to Driven" Porsche 924 stunt, Driven's testing team trying out various cars (Ariel Atom, Ferrari Enzo, Alfa 147 GTA) or the Autocar Sideways Challenge 2002 coverage, which surprisingly enough, didn't feature Tiff Needell despite his appearance in the challenge, placed right next to Jason Plato on the magazine's coverage of the event.

After the sixth episode, the show took a slight break, as it was being cancelled by Channel 4 for its future runs. As a result, the show returned on 1st December 2002 on the 4:30 PM Sunday schedule and finished airing on 15th December 2002, following the conclusion of the in-car crooning competition, the Austin Princess story and the presenters group testing their favourite cars tested over the course of the programme's history.

=== After cancellation ===\ After 1st of January 2003, all traces of Driven on their home website were erased forever, with the On TV section only consisting of the World Rally Championship coverage. Driven as a result was discontinued for good on Channel 4's programming schedule.

The last three presenters went their separate ways; Penny remained as the presenter for WRC coverage before moving in 2005 to present Used Car Roadshow with Jason Dawe on ITV4, Mike Brewer moved to ITV1 to present short-lasted Wrecks To Riches series, the (recorded) 2004 run of Revving Up and ITV1's flagship car programme Pulling Power from 2005-2008 with Mike Rutherford. Jason Plato moved in 2004 to Channel 5's Fifth Gear, where he presents the show to this day under the show's revision being Fifth Gear: Recharged.

Preservation Status

Currently, Driven has 79 episodes available out of 90 total episodes aired over the course of 4 years. More details can be found on this documentation of Driven.

External Links

• Google Docs link for more information on the series. Link provided by user revolume.