November 2008

High Speed Action

It’s a race to the living room each week as Top Gear Australia burns across our TV screens – meet the men in the driver’s seat of this thrilling motoring show

WORDS MATT BROGAN

The multi award-winning BBC television series Top Gear – born from the magazine of the same name – today attracts a weekly audience of some 500 million viewers in more than 120 countries.

So when Australia’s SBS channel announced a local version of TV’s most exciting motoring show, a few eyebrows were raised as to whether they could pull it off. Could the concept really work transplanted in Australia?

With the show on air since end September, we caught up with the Top Gear Australia team in Kalgoolie, Western Australia, to ask some behind-the-scenes questions of the show’s stars.

The three men who have been chosen to host the show, and on whose heads the success of the show rests, share the same passion, drive and larrikin sense of humour SBS producers believe can win the hearts of Australia’s petrolheads everywhere.

Charlie Cox, Warren Brown and Steve Pizzati may not all be household names yet, but if Top Gear Australia is a hit, they could well be in line for small-screen stardom.

The UK version of the show has won multiple British National Television Awards, International Emmy Awards and British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.

A staggering 4,000 audition DVDs were received for the Australian series, and while all three men remain unclear about how they made the cut, each has an innate and obvious love for cars and racing.

Meet the hosts (from left to right)
Steve Pizzati, Charlie Cox and
Warren Brown, who call themselves
“the ugliest men on TV”A former racing car driver, Charlie Cox is today a successful radio presenter, but he says his love for racing cars has remained an incurable itch. He raced in the Porsche Cup and British Touring Car Championships (and won three) and juggled commentating and racing commitments until winning a spot on Top Gear Australia.

An award-winning cartoonist and regular motoring columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Warren Brown is also a radio personality who hosts his own radio program on the ABC, when not tending to his collection of vintage cars.

And then there’s Steve Pizzati, a bona fide speed freak. An advanced driver-training instructor, race driver for Porsche Australia, a member of the International Audi driver- training team and part-time stunt driver, it’s fair to say he was born with petrol in his veins.

Back to Kalgoolie. Despite the West Australian dust on this particular Top Gear Australia shoot, these three gregarious hosts are up for a chat, although tight-lipped about details of the episode, and even more so about The Stig – the mysterious and forever faceless fourth host of the program.

Pizzati is the first to speak about the character known only as The Stig, but after confirming there will be one in the Australian version of the show, he carefully checks his next comment. “There is a Stig… he gets stuck in a car and goes fast – that’s his job,” Pizzati says.

SBS’ website confirms this much is true, and says the UK’s Top Gear character drives fast, can smell corners, and no one knows when he was born, or how. The character appears to be part of the show’s success.

“I think if we knew who he was, it would kill the mystique,” Pizzati says. “And there’s nowhere to go from there. The endless debate at the pub is worth far more than knowing.”

Top Gear’s main focus is to test-drive and showcase vehicles and the UK series has seen hosts brutally appraise a wide selection of motorcars. Cox says the Australian team has also been given a virtual freehand to do and say as they please. “We’ve had no instruction whatsoever as to containing our views… which is really refreshing from a presenter’s point of view,” he says.

Pizzati clarifies the Australian series won’t be all about Holdens and Fords. “It’s more about the Australian car market as a whole than just Australian cars, but that said, we’ve got enough Fords and Holdens coming.”

Brown says just like the UK version, the Australian series will be cheeky, but that it will have an obvious and uniquely Australian feel to it, “without being ocka”.

“The challenge is to make an even better show than the original,” he says. “We’re not replacing the UK version. Viewers will get to see the UK version and they’ll get an Aussie version, which for us is such a unique break and for viewers is a bonus.”

Pizzati adds: “And the stories are all ours, just like the UK guys get to be creative, so do we. So far all our ideas have been met with an enthusiastic ‘Yeah, let’s do it. That’ll be great!’”

One of the most popular segments in the UK version of the show is called ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’, and Brown says the Australian version will likely follow suit, but won’t give anything else away. “We’re thinking about it, and I shouldn’t imagine we’ll have any trouble finding anyone to fill the seat, but at this stage everything’s a little bit top secret” he smiles.

The hosts have been busy over the
past months travelling across the
countryside filming challengesNay-sayers of Australia’s attempt to emulate the award-winning series have said one of the main reasons Top Gear has enjoyed international success to-date is thanks to its European and North American backdrops.

One of the most popular episodes in the UK was called Top Gear: Polar Special and saw the hosts race to the Magnetic North Pole from Resolute Bay in Canada in a Toyota Hilux and a dog-drawn sled. It went to air in 2007 and was the first episode to be shown in high definition.

But Pizzati says, “We’ve planned for a lot of these types of adventures. Australia has one of the best landscapes in the world and we’re so lucky to have it on our doorstep.

It’s so amazing and diverse and you can find just about any scenery imaginable,” he says fervently. “We don’t need to go to Europe, it’s all right here. We’re very blessed to have it all, and we plan to exploit that as much as possible.”