Speed Channel’s new The Car Show

[Bodhii]

Speed Channel’s new The Car Show will premiere its first episode on July 13th at 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific time. The show stars Adam Carolla of The Man Show fame, John Salley of The Best **** Sports Show, Matt Farah, the host of TheSmokingTire.com, and Dan Neil of The Wall Street Journal.

The show features four hosts discussing automotive news, topics, and events inside the studio. Of course it would not be a real car show without some driving as well. The hosts climb behind the wheel of high end luxury and exotic cars as well as $ 500 beaters. They also took the opportunity to interview the heros and moguls in the automotive world. Somehow this seems quite familiar to Top Gear and indeed the show is aimed as a direct competitor to the Top Gear USA show on the History Channel.

Patrick Stevenson, editor at Auto Electic, visited the taping of the first episode of the show and this is his initial opinion:

What I have seen from the pilot and the taping of this first episode The Car Show is more entertaining then Top Gear USA. Now I have only seen a few segments outside of the studio and I can say the production value has a similar feel to the high end artistic look of Top Gear. For me what makes the show so entertaining is the hosts themselves. The reason Top Gear UK is such a hit is the dynamic the hosts have together as a group. This is the critical piece that Top Gear USA lacked in the first season. The segments were great but the personalities were a bit stiff and felt forced. As a viewer I was always comparing the three hosts to their UK counter parts. On The Car Show the hosts personalities come together so naturally. The exchange of trash talking back and forth on and off camera had myself and the rest of the audience laughing.

[FiftyPence]

Episode 1 is available on Hulu and if you live outside the US I can recommend installing Hotspot Shield which will disguise your location and allow you to watch shows on hulu.com

http://www.hulu.com/watch/257913/the...kill-the-lemon

http://hotspotshield.com/

Note the use of GoPro Hero HD cameras on their car in the 24hours of Lemons.

[gazza1]

Thanks Fifty for the links..it worked perfect.

[FiftyPence]

Glad to hear it. I'm not keen on Adam Carolla on this show and I thought they used some of the same ideas from Top Gear such as entering into a 24hour race.

Matt Farah and the guy from WSJ are great presenters on the show. John just seems to be there as the token black guy.

[randombloke]

Thanks for the suggestion of hotspotshield - already had it installed but thought it would be too laggy to watch, but it's fine.

I've been a Matt Farah fan since Garage 419, so glad to see him get some TV exposure - just a pity the format is so far skewed to the TG magazine style.

Note the use of GoPro Hero HD cameras on their car in the 24hours of Lemons.

them cameras are getting everywhere - especially with all the reality shows where they need cheap "disposable" hd eg ax men. I finally ordered one myself last week - not been impressed with the various cameras I've tried for in-car footage so far, so hoping this one finally nails it for me.

[FiftyPence]

In a later sequence they appeared to be using another brand perhaps the ContourHD camera so I wouldn't be surprised if the show were approached by those two brands to use their cameras.

Video should be good for you but don't pin your hopes on the audio too much, I highly recommend the Zoom H1 for audio capture rather than the GoPro onboard audio. The best windscreen for the Zoom so far has been a furryheads foam core extreme or their carbon kevlar option.

[randombloke]

thanks for the suggestion - I'll see how it goes out of the box as I'm only looking at this for my own entertainment. Adding extra units will go against one of my main criteria which is the device being small/unobtrusive.

[FiftyPence]

Episode 2 now available guys

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKywcSH8ufQ"]‪The car show episode 2‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

[KfabR8]

I was not impressed at all with the show. - but I'll try episode 2 for the heck of it.

It's a poorly done copy of Top Gear in my eyes. - heck even the US version of Top Gear doesn't do Top Gear justice, so a second version of the same layout it pretty useless.

[Newspyderv10man]

After watching Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and his gang AND Fifth Gear with Tiff and his gang, the new shows are boring to me and esp when they are trying to imitate Top or Fifth Gear.

Thank goodness we have BBC on our cable in Fl.

THe new Top Gear season starts soon with the real players!!