History: When Top Gear gave birth to Fifth Gear

Wednesday, July 19, 2006 | 2 comments » | Bookmark and Share

Each one has its own fans -personally, I love them both. Since I’ve been playing a lot of video clips from both shows, I thought I’d share with you a little bit of history about the creation of Fifth Gear and what Top Gear had to do with it.

According to Wikipedia, the story has it that following the departure of presenter and TV persona, Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear’s show rating started to flop so in 2001 BBC decided to pull the plug from the show after a whopping 24 years! -Luckily for us this was only temporary.

Then, along came Channel 5 which wanted to buy the Top Gear name from the BBC, which refused, so they created the similarly branded Fifth Gear TV Show in an attempt to take on the banner and audience which had been shed from the BBC after the axing.

Several of Top Gear's ex-presenters, including Quentin Willson, Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson were hired by Channel Five to create the new motoring show.

Interesting facts

·The original format consisted of an approximately 23 minute programme. The 8th season returned in the Autumn of 2005 in a longer format of 45 minutes, which is closer to the relaunched version of Top Gear which is 60 minutes long.

·Besides giving out a car each programme, Fifth Gear is distinguishable from the current Top Gear in that it is typically less outrageous and more of a straightforward motoring show.

·The current presenters of Fifth Gear are Jon Bentley, Vicki Butler-Henderson, Tiff Needell, Jason Plato and Tom Ford.

·In the United States, the show is broadcast on SPEED Channel. The edited version of the show is also shown on Discovery Real Time.

Via: Wikipedia

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2 comments

  1. Eduardo Maio // September 02, 2006  

    They are two different shows, together they complete each other. On one hand you have Top Gear, a funny show that will give you one hour of pure car entertainment. On the other hand you have Fifth Gear, with the great reviews from Tiff, some very useful tips from Jon Bentley and some awesome tech info from Tom.

    Two great shows I must say, the best of the best in the motoring vector.

  2. Jack Yan // January 28, 2009  

    From what I understand, Five actually bought the format but the BBC would not sell the name. So, when Jeremy Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman wanted to bring the show back, it could not have the same format as the old Top Gear, which had been sold. Jon Bentley, one of Top Gear’s old producers, is also now on Fifth Gear.
       A very interesting fact is that a short-haired James May replaced Jeremy Clarkson when he first quit the show in 1999. Obviously it wasn’t enough to keep the ratings up.

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