It’s nearly impossible to pick a single review out of all the brilliant ones BBC Top Gear ever did. However, the time when Jeremy introduced the fifth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTI on the wet Dunsfold Aerodrome track, to the sounds of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence (as remixed by Linkin Park), everything really clicked.
This was about the time when TG was really getting good in its post-2002 iteration, and it’s a clip I return to, time after time. The way the show used soundtrack music has been unparalleled, and Depeche Mode works extremely well here.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/35338999[/vimeo]
No matter which car I’m driving, when that remix of that song comes, I’m rev-matching and dropping a couple gears and getting it to the redline.
Weekend Edition: Volkswagen Golf GTI MkV on Top Gear (2004)
By Antti Kautonen
Mar 29, 2015
By Antti Kautonen
The resident Finn of Hooniverse. Owns old Peugeots and whatnot, writes long thinkpieces on unloved cars. These two facts might be related.
Bradley Brownell
I didn’t even know that they gave actual consumer advice – I don’t think I have seen them in cars of above four digits production number cars very often.
They used too… And then they just went super-car-mad!
Top Gear has always done a bang up job of incorporating the right type of music into their episodes. For example, the piano bit at the end of the British sports car piece in season 15 fit perfectly. But for me, the best soundtrack wasn’t for Top Gear, it was in Clarkson’s solo piece he did in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, called Clarkson’s car Years. http://www.streetfire.net/video/clarksons-car-years-the-new-romantics_206906.htm
Seriously, their soundtrack choices are exemplary, though I sometimes wonder if the production team have ransacked my CD towers. Boom Boom Satellites, Future Sound Of London, Boards Of Canada, Hybrid, the number of times I say “I’ve got that album!” my fiance’s eyes glaze over.
VelociRaptor intro with Boston’s The Launch gave me goosebumps.
F-ck that was awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nuv6bBDRSU
So in the clip of the Golf V GTI Jeremy basically tells us that the Golf IV GTI was utter crap…
If that is true, what substance was Jeremy using when he made this clip about the Golf IV GTI…
You aren’t expecting Clarkson to be consistent, are you?
Well, he said in the end that GTI is just a tiny bit better than Peugeot. Damning it by faint praise, I think. Not really similar to superlatives piled on the later Golf.
If anything he’s putting down the Peugeot by damining the Golf with “faint praise” over it, a 306 chassis is far more playful than the the MK4 LumpenGolf, in any derivative, GTI or otherwise.
Do you really watch that and think, “that’s pretty good?” Because I’m rolling my eyes at about every other sentence Jeremy utters. He’s a tubby cliche, I think he said every sentence he could about ten or fifteen years ago. How many cars had he pronounced the best “x” ever? Twenty? Thirty? Two hundred? His shtick is tired, time for some new blood frankly. Let him take his millions and retire.
I’d rather hear what Jesse Combs thinks of a car. At least she’s not gonna drool over a mamma mobile like a mkiv golf. Cmon.