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A few stipulations: It goes without saying this list features only episodes from the original, ongoing, may-it-live-forever British version of the show. The other country-specific spinoffs aren’t worthy of mention. Also, I’ve included only races that have been long enough to split into multiple segments on the show. And finally, I disregarded “road trips” wherein the guys each debate the merits of whatever cars each of them have selected, and the overall goal isn’t really finishing first.

Naturally, any of these, no matter how far down the list, has more charm and entertainment value in 30 seconds than any of the aforementioned country-specific Top Gear spinoffs have in an entire season.

1. Aston Martin DB9 vs. Trains (Season 4, Episode 1) Race route: London to Monte Carlo. The original Epic Race and still the best. There was something absolutely electrifying about the production values, the closeness of the finish and the allure of the car itself, the then-new and drop-dead gorgeous DB9. This is the race that continues to hold car guys glued to their TV sets for its entirety.
2. Jaguar XK120 vs. Motorcycle vs. Locomotive (Season 13, Episode 1) Race route: London to Edinburgh, Scotland. Also known as The Race to the North. Absolutely magnificent. No, it may not have featured the supercar du jour, but it’s hard to witness sweeping overhead shots of the brutish Tornado locomotive or classic XK120 blasting through the northern English countryside, set to a driving orchestral score, and not be stirred. It’s an epic slice of classic British technological heaven.
3. Nissan GT-R vs. Japanese Bullet Train (Season 11, Episode 4) Race route: Hakui, Japan, to the top of Mount Nokogiri (near Tokyo). Easily the closest finish of all the Epic Races. In spite of the “camouflaged” editing, with most installments you can sort of tell who has the edge near the end, but this one is a true nail-biter. Fun to watch.
4. Caterham Seven vs. Building One (Season 8, Episode 7) Race route: The guys must build a Seven from a kit before the Stig can drive a completed one from the factory in Surrey to the presenters’ location in Scotland. I’ll admit I’m a bit biased in favor of this one because constructing a Caterham in my garage would be paradise. So as much as the guys bickered, and I wished they have just let James direct the whole thing, I did truly enjoy watching it come together. Bonus points for an Epic Race featuring the Stig, whose interactions with ordinary folks are invariably entertaining.
5. Car vs. Bike vs. Public Transport vs. Speedboat (Season 10, Episode 5) Race route: Across London to London City Airport. Another Epic Race including the Stig, who is given the public transport option and subjected to the most “face time” with mere mortals we’ve ever seen. Otherwise a bit of a snoozer, watching all the participants crawl through London traffic.
6. Ferrari Daytona vs. Powerboat (Season 12, Episode 5) Race route: Portofino, Italy, to St. Tropez, France. A short route, and a bit simplistic, saved by the Daytona. James’ time in the powerboat can get monotonous, consisting as it does of him getting his kidneys pulverized for the duration of the race, but any time Richard cracks the Daytona’s 12 butterflies on the Autoroute and lets the Ferrari’s engine sing, it’s all worth it.
7. Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren vs. Boats (Season 6, Episode 6) Race route: London to Oslo, Norway. Debits for one of the parties not actually finishing the race. Bonus points for the beautiful shots of the SLR McLaren crossing the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. All in all, an okay race.
8. Bugatti Veyron vs. Cessna 182 (Season 7, Episode 5) Race route: Switzerland to London. More demerits for one of the parties not actually finishing the race as planned. Jeremy’s comments about the Veyron are entertaining, however, and the car puts on a show. How could it not, with 1,000 horsepower on tap?
9. Ferrari 612 Scaglietti vs. Jet Plane (Season 5, Episode 8) Race route: London to Verbier, Switzerland. The second Epic Race, this one would have been better if the featured car had been more compelling, but the 612, as nice as it may be to drive, is kind of revolting to look at. Not a very interesting race route, either.
10. Jaguar XJ vs. Earth’s Rotation (Season 16, Episode 6) Race route: Across the width of England, from west to east. Again, not a very interesting car, and witnessing the trash talk between the opposing sides being as fun as it is, competing against “the Sun” isn’t terribly compelling on account of the lack of give and take. Overblown.
11. Porsche Panamera S vs. Mail (Season 13, Episode 4) Race route: Southern England to northern Scotland. Just depressing. Racing a letter across the “height” of Britain? In a hideous Panamera? Okay…

So…there you have it. Comments, corrections and additions welcome. I should note that all of these are available in their entirety if you subscribe to Netflix’s streaming service (no affiliation).

If you have an hour to spare and consider yourself any kind of motorsport enthusiast, you owe to yourself to sit through the documentary above. It offers a brief overview of the sport of rally racing in general before focusing on the ’82-’86 Group B era, featuring a class of race cars among the most electrifying ever built. From the early domination of the Audi Quattro to the mid-era success of the Peugeot 205 T16 through to the competition-crushing Lancia Delta S4, the clip resurrects tons of archival footage and showcases beautiful in-action and static views of each car. Less renown Group B racers such as the Ford RS200 and MG Metro 6R4 even get airtime, along with sports car entrants like the Ferrari 288 GTO and Porsche 959. It’s amazingly well-produced and comprehensive documentary. Watch it if you have a chance.

One of the larger “controversies” (if you can call it that) to emerge from our NFL-sanctioned Super Bowl entertainment spectacle this past Sunday evening was the hubbub generated by Chrysler’s latest TV spot.

Reprising the rah-rah pro-America theme from last year’s ad, Chrysler’s 2012 effort aired during halftime and features narration by Clint Eastwood. In his inimitable voice, he extolls Detroit’s “revival,” extrapolating that to the country at large and encouraging us to “pull together” to fully recover from the economic malaise of the past few years. Chrysler isn’t explicitly mentioned other than brief glimpses of their cars and trucks throughout the clip, and the ad seems to focus more on drumming up latent positive feelings of patriotism which the viewer may or may not then translate to the automaker’s cars in particular.

Most of the online hand-wringing over the ad centered on the impression that it was a sort of thinly-veiled campaign spot for President Obama’s reelection. Tenuous parallels were drawn between the “halftime in America” line and the fact that a reelection campaign is a kind of “halftime” of a two-term president’s tenure. Also, the ad’s pleas for Americans to “pull together” seem to echo some of the administration’s rhetoric as they chastise Congress for its (in their eyes) intractability.

Rich Lowry at NRO, on the other hand, takes primary aim not at the ad’s tone, or at perceived implications of certain phrases, but at the spot’s revisionist history:

[It] is a half-baked tale about the revival of the automotive industry wrapped in economic nationalism: Dirty Harry does chest-thumping corporatism. Eastwood says that Americans are hurting and that “the people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now, Motor City is fighting again.”

We all pulled together? As euphemism, this is clever; as history, it is false. Congress never approved the bailouts. Given the option to do so explicitly, it declined. The Bush and Obama administrations acted on their own, diverting TARP funds to Detroit regardless of the letter of the law. In Eastwood’s telling, a legally dubious act of executive highhandedness qualifies as patriotic collective action.

This is the correct line of criticism: Not directed toward vague implications of the ad, but at what it calls out explicitly. We can debate all day over what Chrysler may or may not have suggested, but when actual facts are presented, we have solid ground on which to build an argument.

In any case, in response to the flurry of conversation, Eastwood himself debunked speculation about his loyalties, and by extension, the actual meaning of several debated phrases in the ad:

l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK.

There you have it, from the horse’s mouth. If critics want something more substantial to seize upon, perhaps they should target last year’s Chrysler ad, which features rapper and Detroit native Eminem. The 2011 spot is a paean to Detroit’s resilience, much like this year’s ad, only it features an actual Chrysler product more prominently: the then-new 200 sedan. The spot is well-produced, to be sure, but I’d be hard-pressed to find a genuine car guy who wasn’t a little put off by the image of a gritty rapper cruising through downtown Detroit behind the wheel of a very un-thug-like vehicle, the kind of car more likely to turn up in a Kroger parking lot or be the mainstay of a rental fleet. For car buffs, that juxtaposition is more jarring than anything that graced the small screen this year.

Click on the jump below to watch this year’s and last year’s Chrysler Super Bowl ads:

Watch the clips!

I think this one might backfire on Honda. Maybe not on a conscious level for the average viewer, but there are definitely depressing undercurrents.

Briefly, then, let’s discuss the clip’s highlights

1. The car is prominently featured. In contrast to many car ads which put forth an idea or attempt to create a mood in lieu of actually showing the vehicle, we are “treated” (I use that word loosely) to some nice shots and angles of the CR-V tooling around.
2. Exuberant pacing. The editing of the clip effectively communicates the car’s runabout, practical nature as a sort of “companion” that can keep up with a busy daily routine.
3. All the scenes are easy to correlate with those of the original film. The ad pays homage to all the iconic scenes from the ’80s classic; I can’t think of anything from the original I wish they had paid tribute to in the TV spot.

And poor decisions:

1. The whole premise of the ad. Matthew Broderick’s character Ferris Bueller drives a Ferrari 250GT Calfornia during his “day off” in the original film. I can’t imagine many things more singularly depressing than puttering around town in a Honda CR-V, remembering that day from my youth when I was serenaded by the dulcet tones of a six-Weber Ferrari V12 at WOT all day long. If that isn’t a metaphor for the descent into mediocrity that often accompanies middle age, I don’t know what is.
2. Ferris is old. Yes, the ad’s concept is that Broderick—not the character he’s completely synonymous with—is experiencing a real-life Ferris-like “day off,” but who are they kidding? Viewers will immediately see Ferris, not Broderick; more than that, they’ll notice he’s aged, and as much as fans of the original film identified with and wanted to be Ferris, anyone who watches the ad is encouraged to identify with the older, squishier “Ferris.” Not a pleasant proposition.
3. The final shot of the car shows it bottoming out in a shower of sparks. Yes, the shot recalls the inimitable Ferrari + Star Wars theme music scene from the ’80s movie, but is that really the final impression to make on your viewers? A dumpy-looking CR-V clanking down on the asphalt, rear wiper flapping ignominiously?

So, some good points and some significant debits. Overall, a thumbs-down to Honda’s too-cute effort. Give me the Seinfeld/Jay Leno Acura NSX ad instead. Even if it doesn’t really show the car all that much.

The post title even rhymes; how about that. In the interest of disseminating good content, I present my list of the seven most enjoyable/significant automotive publications of the past year, the Spannerhead Seven™:

• Ate Up With Motor. My favorite automotive history site, it functions as a kind of one-man crusade to provide the most well-researched, in-depth treatments of obscure, rare and iconic cars. Usually updated a couple of times a month, and not to be missed. Great job, Aaron!
• Car and Driver. A pillar of the automotive media world, Car and Driver‘s reporting and features are reliably sharp, frequently impudent and always interesting.
• Jalopnik. For the vehicular omnivore, Jalopnik covers a wide swath of subjects, reporting on everything from the latest concepts to rumors to happenings on automotive forums to marginally-relevant editorials. Quirky and fun.
• Autoblog. A mainstay of the online automotive press, this site’s opinions are always right on the money, and their motorsport coverage (esp. F1) is top-notch as well.
• Top Gear. An institution among car buffs, Top Gear is the standard by which all (and I do mean all) automotive shows are judged. They’ve lost their way a bit with the ever more elaborate challenges, taking some of the focus away from the cars in favor of the inter-host chemistry, but it’s still far and away the best car show out there.
• Left Lane News. Frequently first with breaking developments in the automotive world, Left Lane provides eminent reporting and commentary on political and car industry-wide happenings.
• Grassroots Motorsports. One of the few tuner magazines out there to actually “get it,” GRM seems to channel the way true car buffs think, and emphasize the modification paths the more sober-minded among us would embark upon with our cars. Less style, more substance.

If you’re new (or not so new) to Spannerhead, do yourself a favor and check out the “Headlights” section at the top of the main page. I hand-pick the articles to post there (it’s not an automated feed) and update it more frequently than the blog itself. Happy new year, all!

I know that more than anything else, Motor Trend‘s post is kind of an end-of-year throwaway stat compilation. And the editorial staff certainly has enough sense to grasp that qualifying a car’s handling is more than about just the raw numbers. Still, the contrast in criteria between MT‘s “10 Best Handling Cars of 2011” and Car and Driver‘s recent duo of “Best Handling Car in America for Less than $100K” and then “…Less than $40K” is instructive.

In generating their respective assessments, MT relied solely on raw skidpad and track numbers, while C&D, although they used track time as a “tool” in their comparo, treated the numbers as a smaller part of a bigger picture, with additional metrics like steering response, body control and chassis composure factored into their evaluation. In contrast to MT‘s quick-and-dirty establishment of a benchmark for internet racers to bicker over, C&D set themselves the more ambitious goal of trying to qualify the un-quantifiable, of trying to methodically communicate something that’s primarily sensed by the driver, and oftentimes can have far more of an impact on how a car handles than raw capability. Case in point: Anyone who’s ever attended a track day or HPDE will tell you stories of many cars that were slower on paper actually driven faster around the track than more high-caliber racers, simply because the slower cars were more communicative and benign in their subjective feedback to the driver.

The finishing positions of the Corvette Z06 in both the MT and C&D articles provide an extreme example of the exclusivity of objective and subjective handling. According to the numbers, the car is supremely capable, ranking first in MT‘s assessment, but in terms of driver feedback and response, it leaves a lot to be desired, and it comes in sixth out of seventh in the C&D article.

The takeaway from all this is something forum junkies and car buffs in general need to bear in mind when flaunting track times, 1/4 mile trap speeds and braking numbers in online discussions: Your automotive hero may be the performance be-all end-all under the right circumstances, but figures alone don’t seal the deal. No one can prove one car is better than another by simply matching up the data—it’s how a car feels, how it responds, if it makes you smile and feel confident behind the wheel whether it has 90 or 573 hp. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the ability of the car to connect with its driver that separates the truly great from the pretenders, and ensures those that excel in that capacity a loyal following.

Riffing on the classic Conan sketch, here’s an example of a train wreck caused by the collision of MMORPG geekery and car enthusiast posturing:

Apparently you can make enough money selling WoWBots to buy a tuned, carbon-fiber-laden Nissan GT-R for $150,000. That’s what one 18-year-old Zilvia.net forum denizen says he did, and now he’s selling the car on the board. Naturally, everyone else thinks he’s trolling.

As the husband of an avid World of Warcraft player (and the owner of a level 85 Draenei mage, no less), the Jalopnik post held particular relevance for me. Needless to say, I immediately sent the link to my wife and asked her if there was any possible way for her to get into this apparently lucrative “WoWBots” programming scene and earn me enough money to score a GT-R as well. Still waiting for a response on that one, but it may be just as well—the thread in question apparently descended into the usual claims, lies and YouTube “proof” which the alleged owner of the GT-R later admitted was all a scam. Yet another “get car quick” scheme goes up in smoke. Oh well.

Electronic Arts releases the latest chapter in the prolific Need for Speed racing game series in a couple of weeks, Need for Speed: The Run.

Unlike its rivals, the well-established Gran Turismo 5 and the upstart yet anticipated Forza Motorsport 4, the NFS series represents the more scenario-driven, cinematic, arcade-like driving game in contrast to the more realistic, simulation-oriented thrust of the other two games. It’s a niche worth occupying; after a while, Forza 4 and particularly GT5 can feel very stale in their commitment to realism. A little bending of the laws of physics every now and then, especially coupled with an engaging storyline, can be a welcome thing in a racing game.

Of course, if the quality of the car rendering suffers, for car buffs, it can be a distraction, as we become unduly focused on inaccuracies of the cars’ shapes. Fortunately, if the NFS:TR trailer shown after the jump below is any indication, it seems the developers have that aspect of the game pretty well buttoned-down.

In a clip sure to ignite heated arguments between BMW and Audi partisans, it features the protagonist driving a BMW E92 M3 GTS versus an Audi R8 V10 in a snowy setting. Armchair racers will no doubt weigh the merits of the M3 GTS’s more race-ready chassis against the R8 V10’s power and AWD advantages, among other things… But it’s all a moot point, really, since there are obviously “arcade-like” levels of grip exhibited by both cars, and, well, remember all that stuff I mentioned about bending the laws of physics? Yep:

Watch the clip!

Well, sort of.

This coming Tuesday, Discovery Channel launches their new vehicle-themed spinoff channel: Discovery Velocity. I call the new network a party crasher because the much-publicized attempts to get a US-based car show off the ground are still struggling, and onto their tenuously-held turf saunters a full-fledged automotive network. Of course, it’s not like Speed hasn’t been around for years, but that’s always struck me as a more racing-focused outfit, with less emphasis on creating an “entertaining motoring show” in the Top Gear UK vein.

The “sort of” qualification stems from the fact that none of the existing shows Discovery is relegating to Velocity provides TGUK (or TGUS or The Car Show, for that matter) with any direct, head-on competition. The transplanted shows range from a custom-themed program featuring Chip Foose to a show centered on collectible classics and hosted by Keith Martin, and everything in between. At the very least, there will be a little something for everyone, contrasted with the more “one size fits all” approach of the Top Gear clones. We’ll see, but Discovery’s method of hedging their bets by spreading the programming out into a whole network may prove to be the smarter—if more expensive—solution to the Great American Car Program quandary.